The OECD says vast amounts of money are kept abroad and go untaxed to the extent that taxpayers fail to comply with tax obligations in their home jurisdictions. And, further, that jurisdictions around the world, small and large, developing and developed, OECD and non-OECD, now stand united in calling for further action to address the issues of international tax avoidance and evasion. *“Co-operation is critical in winning this battle and a key aspect of that co-operation is exchange of information,”* it claims.

A major breakthrough towards more tax transparency was accomplished in 2009 with information exchange upon request becoming the international standard and the restructured [Global Forum on Exchange of Information and Transparency for Tax Purposes](http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/) starting to monitor the implementation of the standard through in-depth peer reviews.

**Another step change in international tax transparency**

Following the commitments to automatic exchange made by the G8 leaders at their summit last June the G20 Leaders at their meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia in September fully endorsed the OECD proposal for a truly global model of automatic exchange and invited the OECD working with G20 countries to present such a new single standard for automatic exchange of information in time for the February 2014 meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors.

**A single global standard for automatic exchange of financial account information**

The OECD today released the single global standard.

The premise is that jurisdictions obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis. It sets out the financial account information to be exchanged, the financial institutions that need to report, the different types of accounts and taxpayers covered, as well as common due diligence procedures to be followed by financial institutions.

Click [here](http://www.oecd.org/ctp/exchange-of-tax-information/automatic-exchange-of-financial-account-information.htm) or [here](https://bfsb-bahamas.com/reports.php?cmd=view&id=2717&pre=y) to download the new standard.