Switzerland has committed to adopting the global standard for the international automatic exchange of information in tax matters. The legal basis for the implementation of AEOI in Switzerland entered into force on January 1, 2017.
Identification, account and financial information is exchanged, including the name, address, country of residence and tax identification number, as well as details of the reporting financial institution, account balance and investment income. Thanks to the exchanged information, cantonal tax authorities can verify whether taxpayers have correctly declared their financial accounts abroad in their tax returns. The implementation of the AEOI is being reviewed by the OECD's Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (Global Forum).
This year, the AIA took place with a total of 101 states. Albania, Brunei Darussalam, Nigeria, Peru and Turkey were added to the 96 existing states. Switzerland mutually exchanged data with 74 states. Switzerland received information from 27 states but did not send any because the states either did not yet meet international confidentiality and data security requirements (14) or voluntarily chose not to provide data (12). This year, Russia was among the states to which no data were delivered.
There are currently about 9,000 reporting financial institutions registered with the FTA (banks, trusts, insurance companies, etc.), which collected and transmitted the data to the FTA. The FTA sent information on about 3.4 million financial accounts to partner countries and received information on about 2.9 million financial accounts from them. The FTA cannot provide any information on the scope of the financial assets.
The media release of the FTA and further information are available here.
