The case
Bank employee demoted to proceedings object: In a guest commentary Professor Andrea Opel criticizes the Swiss Federal Tax Administration’s (FTA) practice of providing data in administrative assistance (see Flash of 06.08.2018)
(…) Administrative assistance is subject to the so-called “special restriction” (Art. 26 Abs. 2 OECD-MA), which determines that the requesting state can use information obtained by means of administrative assistance only for those persons about who information was requested. This means that using such data is limited to tax payers of the requesting state, third parties are excluded.
Swiss FTA has relaxed the special restriction mentioned in the previous paragraph, using the euphemistic term „change of practice“, i.e. under FTA’s new regime the requesting state may also use data when dealing with third parties (owners of information included). The fact that FTA as a governmental authority applying laws is taking it so far is rather astonishing. Such practice undermines administrative assistance and contradicts intent and purpose of administrative assistance.
Source: NZZ e-paper 14 August 2018 (highly abbreviated); well worth reading.
The commentary
Opel’s arguments are convincing. Let’s hope that FTA is going to reconsider this change of practice, otherwise any third party who might be affected will have to oppose data deliveries. Only those that resist are informed!
P.S. According to today’s NZZ ZKB employees are appealing against data delivery (Source: today’s NZZ) – see also Flash of 26.07.2018.
