SAINT-PETERSBURG (AFP) ― The OECD on Wednesday urged G20 leaders meeting in Saint Petersburg to seize a “once in a century” chance to clamp down on tax cheats by agreeing on an automatic exchange of banking data.
“Moments like these come once in a century,” Pascal Saint-Amans, who in charge of tax issues for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, told AFP ahead of the summit Thursday.
As many countries in the developed world are seeking ways to boost their state finances which have been stretched by an economic slump, consensus has formed on the need to fight tax evasion urgently.
Already in 2011, G20 leaders warned in a summit that tax havens would be shunned by the international community.
A year later, Germany and Britain led a push for the leading economies to tighten international standards for corporate tax regimes in order to close loopholes for big companies.
In July 2012, the United States and five European countries decided to push ahead and try to set automatic information exchange as the international standard by setting up model agreements on sharing bank data.
On the eve of the two-day summit of the world’s top 20 developed and emerging nations, the European Union said it “will push for the automatic exchange of information to become the global standard.”
“It will, notably, support any efforts that help to ensure its swift implementation,” Brussels added.
Pointing towards the change in attitude towards tax cheats, Saint-Amans said: “Four years ago hiding money was a practice without risks, in the last four years it became risky.”
But while he believed that G20 leaders could endorse a move towards an automatic exchange of banking data, he said that the leaders were unlikely to agree on a deadline to do so.
“There will not be a deadline, maybe pledges to proceed quickly,” he said.
For some lobby groups, this does not go far enough.
Oxfam France’s Sebastien Fourmy said the G20 “cannot keep giving the impression that it is playing for time.”
“Just during these two days of summit in Saint-Petersburg alone, 1.7 billion euros will go to tax havens. That sum is big enough to finance half of Senegal’s budget for 2013 or 17 Real Madrid attackers,” said Oxfam France in a statement.
