Global info exchange must to curb tax evasion, India tells G-20

 The Dollar Business Bureau Stressing on the need to keep a check on tax evasion by multi-national companies (MNCs), India has asked the G20 members to expedite the implementation of a common reporting standard to ensure automatic exchange of information among countries. “There is a need to ensure that the common reporting standards on automatic exchange of information should be implemented on a fully reciprocal global basis and those countries which have not yet committed to the timeline of 2017 or 2018 should do it without any further delay. The problem of black money and illicit flow to offshore jurisdictions and tax havens can be addressed only if this is implemented at a global level,” Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was quoted as saying in a PIB release. He expressed concern over transfer pricing and several other measures taken by MNCs to avoid paying tax on international transactions, saying that such practices give “unfair competitive advantage to Multinational Enterprises (MNEs)”. “Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) has been a cause of concern for developing and emerging economies for long as it erodes their tax base depriving them of much needed resources for developmental activities. It is also unfair to the general taxpaying public. It also provides an unfair competitive advantage to Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) vis-à-vis domestic companies which have no opportunities for BEPS strategies,” he added. At present, offshore financial centres and tax havens provide information on the basis of request from any particular country with regard to certain investigations. “The problem of offshore tax evasion and flow of illicit money can be addressed only by the free flow of financial account information, exchanged amongst countries on an automatic basis,” the minister said.    

This article was published on April 20, 2015 – 5:15 pm IST.