The Federal Tax Administration (FTA) has exchanged information on financial accounts for the first time. The exchange takes place within the framework of the global standard for automatic information exchange (AIA).
The first exchange within the framework of the AIA envisages that Switzerland will exchange data in 2018 with the EU states and nine other states and territories (Australia, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Iceland, Japan, Jersey, Canada, Norway, South Korea). The data were transmitted by Switzerland at the end of September 2018.
According to a press release issued by the FTA on 5 October 2018, Romania and Cyprus have been exempted from the transmission because they do not yet meet the international requirements for confidentiality and data security. Data delivery to Australia and France has been delayed because these states have not yet been able to deliver data to the FTA for technical reasons. The FTA has also not yet received data from Estonia, Croatia and Poland. The other partner states have transmitted data to the FTA.
Around 7,000 reporting financial institutions (banks, trusts, insurance companies, etc.) are currently registered with the FTA, which collected and transmitted the data to the FTA. The FTA sent information on around 2 million financial accounts to the partner states and received information from them on financial accounts in the millions. Identifying, account and financial information was exchanged, including the name, address, country of residence and tax identification number, as well as details of the reporting financial institution, the account balance and investment income.
The final figures on the information received are not yet available. The FTA cannot provide any information on the volume of financial assets.
