Switzerland in the age of automatic exchange of banking information
swissinfo.ch
swissinfo.ch
As a side note, the only other country besides the US that collects taxes based on citizenship and not based on residence is Eritrea. The tax policy of Eritrea is described as extortion by a lot of western governments and media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBS_tax_evasion_controversies
https://www.accountingtoday.com/articles/a-top-swiss-bank-se...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/swiss-bank-...
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/1mdb-najib-r...
I believe Japan also does that, for a few years now.
Japanese tax residency has a slippery legal definition, tax residency begins the day after you enter the country “for a purpose exceeding one year” (as determined by the tax authorities not you). So they do often challenge foreign residency claims.
“The association of Accidental Americans”:
US citizens residing in other countries can still receive some services and protection from the US federal government. So it's completely fair to tax them for that. We can argue about the value of those services but clearly it's >0. Those who don't like the deal are free to pay an administrative fee and renounce their citizenship.
> US citizens residing in other countries can still receive some services and protection from the US federal government.
Seriously, like what? In how many percent of situations does this ever come up. Sure it's more than >0, but if it is like 1$/person does it really make sense? This is economic bullying by a country that right now happens to be in a position (having strong military, influence and their currency being the reserve one) to be able to get away with it.
For example: federal student aid doesn't require US residency.
https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/international
Also, the taxes that the US imposes on citizens overseas has some pretty significant exceptions. US citizens can deduct over $100,000 worth of their foreign-earned income and part of their housing expenses.
Differing rules of what’s a short-term vs long term capital gain.
E.g.: Canada doesn’t tax capital gains on your Primary residence when you sell it, but US does.
And buying a non-US ETF can create another tax mess since you’ve now bought into a multibillion dollar trust that doesn’t file with the US gov.
The US doesn’t see your Canadian Tax-free savings account as tax free, so now you have to keep track of every transaction in there.
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/capitalgainhomes...
It's a lot of money, but if you bought a house in Canada in Toronto/Vancouver 30 years ago, you'd be paying US CGT on its sale.
And can a US-citizen/non-US-citizen couple still file jointly?
I’ll be first in line to complain about complicated taxes. I file three income tax returns, thanks to the fact I live in a jurisdiction with local income taxes as well as state and federal.
What it comes down to is that because of its size and economic power there is an enormous incentive for wealthy people who earn their income (in an actual sense, not a tax law menagerie sense) in the US to try to avoid US taxes by living abroad and moving assets, their "home", etc outside of US jurisdiction while still in reality earning their income from the US.
One of the basic benefits is always being able to return to the US. Being inside American borders is very much safer than being anywhere else if/when the next major global military issue arises.
You also get the benefits of the US legal system if you maintain ties, investments, etc.
If you don't want to pay those taxes you are welcome to renounce your citizenship, but you have to get another country to accept you first. (they won't revoke your citizenship if the result is your being stateless)
It’s a funny fear, because today, being in the US vs. some other developed country takes about 7-8 years off your life.
Meanwhile, those developed countries with functioning health care systems that you can return to whenever don’t bother with worldwide taxation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
When accounting for all sexes, US sits at 79.3 years and the top country sits at 83.7 years. Where is this "7-8 years" coming from?
My poor recall.
Does it actually?
I assume that disparity is more to do with the populations of impoverished people around this very diverse country that can't compare to smaller European countries that just don't have those populations.
There is no Mississippi in Germany, those populations are in other countries.
If you compare the whole European Union to the US the disparity is much smaller.
>It’s a funny fear, because today, being in the US vs. some other developed country takes about 7-8 years off your life.
I think that is an exaggeration, I can't find that statistic anywhere.
But you have to look at people in your demographic, not the entire country.
The US has the best health care in the world if you can afford it.
Just about anybody can get insurance and set aside the max out of pocket costs to insure themselves and their family, but they will take a considerable hit in quality of life, home size, luxuries, etc. In other countries that health care is paid for with lowered salaries through taxes and quality of life takes a hit anyway.
But you don’t need a US passport to access that, just a decent one.
But even if you dealt with a broker and crafted a special insurance insurance product to deal with the eventuality of being denied further insurance, you are ignoring something significant: you don't improve the quality of life or lifespan of the population by making healthcare only accessible to the rich.
> There is no Mississippi in Germany, those populations are in other countries.
It depends on what you mean by that comparison. Germany relatively recently absorbed a much poorer East Germany. There are still states like Mecklenburg-Vorpommern that are much poorer than the average in Germany. Yet they're all integrated into Germany's very good healthcare system. It could be the same in the US, but it isn't, for political reasons.
> If you compare the whole European Union to the US the disparity is much smaller.
This is not true. The European Union member states have a much greater range of GDP/capita than US states.
The US government couldn’t care less. If everyone decided to eat only TV dinners and shelf stable snacks that would be A-OK, even desirable because that kind of thing leads to GDP growth. France would never allow it.
US governments are borderline contemptuous of tradition, and tend to court radical reinventions of basic needs. That leads to people getting hurt, but is great for the economy.
>France would never allow it.
While I do not support eating unhealthy foods like that on a regular basis at all (I have some sort of instinctive repulsion towards that), I do support allowing adults to have the freedom to make their own choices regarding what they eat.
In the U.S. no one is going to force you to buy anything, but no one will save you when your market disappears.
It’s a kind of freedom, but it’s not “more choice”. It’s often less choice.
I like to think (hope? Dream?) That there won't be any more major conflicts now that we have nuclear weapons. But betting against the stupidity of politicians seems like a risky proposition.
Well to be fair, once you move back in you will already start paying taxes again. This "benefit" is already paid for by you paing taxes when you effectively become resident again after moving inside the country again. Exactly like it works for any other country right now. This is questionable as a benefit while you're not living there.
> You also get the benefits of the US legal system if you maintain ties, investments, etc.
You get those benefits even if you just do some business in US as a foreigner. By this logic, should US also tax worldwide income of anyone who does any business in it and relies somehow on its legal system? Cmon this is a huge stretch. Also if you maintain ties, investments, this means that you are already helping the country by either supporting business or outright keeping your capital in the country and helping it by investing in it. You are ALREADY helping the country. And by this logic the country is supposed to tax you further to what puniush you for helping it?
I wonder if this is the kind of stuff that pushes EU politicians forward with their notions that they cannot rely on the US?
Several banks have been stomped on for this behavior, the "oldest bank in the world" closed as a result and there have been many other actions.
If you don't want to deal with American taxes, renounce your citizenship, or earn less than $100k abroad.
There are way bigger fish for the US to fry other than Switzerland. FATCA wasn’t created because of Swiss banks. Claiming otherwise is ignorant.
Making cases is hard because these things are very convoluted.
Swiss banks, however, were doing things which were really obviously illegal and their brazen tax avoidance made them a good target for prosecutors. Other targets are honestly just better at avoiding the law and will be harder to get to. Progress is being made though.
A lot of banks in Switzerland will outright refuse to deal with US customers, even when they have residency.
This is, however, not specific to Swiss banks. US citizens (or even green card holders) can have a hard time opening a bank account just about anywhere, because of such onerous reporting requirements[1] to the US authoritues that's it's just not worth their while.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...
uh no.
Every bank around the world is in that position today because of the FATCA treaty.
From personal experience, I can tell you that (value of expatriate services) - (cost of dealing with US tax system) is a very deep negative value.
It's much harder to get your citizens to work in your interest in risky foreign countries if you aren't willing to back them up.
Getting a second passport is extremely costly in terms of time or money, and your “free to pay an administrative fee and renounce” comment indicates that you don’t understand this at all.
Source: went through the process of acquiring a second passport for the purpose of renouncing.
> US citizens residing in other countries can still receive some services and protection from the US federal government.
Same deal for expat citizens of many other countries and their government, but they aren't taxed for it.
There's an expat downthread who was extracted from a dangerous country, and the US later sent him a bill for his services. After reading that, it jogged a memory of reading about this being a common occurrence. So what are these "services" he's supposedly paying taxes for?
> If they want to participate in the US financial system then they have to play by US rules.
This is just simple strong-arm bullying and control-freak data collection, and will almost certainly come back to bite the US as its economy declines over the next decades and loses the leverage to impose these sorts of things.
(Disclosure: I'm a US citizen who resides in the US, and think these regressive practices are gross.)
[0] Eritrea, which is not exactly the best company to be in with regard to this topic, since if you are an expat and don't pay taxes, they threaten your remaining family with violence until you pay. And that's just for a 2% flat tax.
Then there's Boris Johnson, British PM, and until recently US citizen. What benefits do you think he would have been getting as a US citizen abroad, over and above diplomatic protections he already had as MP and member of Govt?
The US rules apply not just to Swiss banks, but to all banks. Many overseas banks will no longer allow US citizens to open accounts, and some have even closed accounts rather than deal with the burden that the US is placing on them. This does not help US citizens at all.
You cannot just renounce your citizenship. Beyond it being costly, you have to have a second citizenship first, which takes time - 7 years is a common length of time, although some countries have shorter or longer requirements, and many have language requirements that you're expected to meet.
The US is one of two countries in the world that require you to jump through tax hoops if you're working overseas.
Even though I'm paying tax overseas, there's no US Representative who fights for my interests. I have one who fights for the interests of the residents of a district I lived in years ago, but I have no relation to that anymore. I have a US senator who fights for the interest of the state listed on my old drivers license, but none who represent me as an expat.
The US was founded precisely because those who were living overseas had no representative fighting for their rights, yet they were still taxed. The same thing is happening today. What I want isn't for this tax to stop, it's to have representation.
There are enough in Mexico, and enough in Canada, and maybe enough in the Philippines to have one Representative for each of those.
The rest, though, are sufficiently spread out that when you group enough different countries together to get enough US citizens for a Representative, that Representative will have such a diverse group of constituents with such diverse concerns that it is not clear the Representative could actually effectively represent them.
France has actually considered taxing French citizens abroad like the US. It comes regularly during presidential campaigns. I think the last serious attempt was Hollande. They backed down because it would require to renegotiate every tax treaty and they didn’t want to open that door.
But I think it will happen one day.
Seems like that would pretty much fit the problem of representing diverse sub-groups naturally. For example say the demographic of "student-age backpackers teaching English overseas" was about 20% of the expat population. Then all else being equal you'd expect candidates who best represented this group to garner about 20% of the vote totals, and therefore gain 1-2 seats.
This is in stark difference to countries like the UK, where MPs have to vote on the party line unless it's declared a conscience vote by the party leader [2]. Voting across party lines in Westminster system parliaments will get you kicked out of the party.
Which is also the case in the US, the party could run a primary challenger to them in the next election.
It's the same case in most parliamentary systems, it's usually right of MPs guaranteed in a constitution. Tradition and procedures, however, tend to ensure party line votes, but there are no legal ramifications, if an MP rebels against the party line.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituencies_for_French_resi...
"The constituencies for French residents overseas are eleven French constituencies, each electing one representative to the National Assembly."
Election results for French expats are typically very different from those back home. LePen was not even close to be qualified for a second turn in the last presidential elections in London. Unless you live in France you would typically not be subject to any of the laws the new government would enact, so part of me thinks “why should I have a say in this?”
On the other hand, LePen proposed to strip French expats of their citizenship if they hold other nationalities, so I suppose having a say in the matter was only fair.
But if they're taxing me, I deserve a vote at the federal level 100%.
I think it would be fair to be able to opt out of tax filing obligations in the US and for that give up the right to vote until you return.
Do you qualify? Then you are exempt from such a ridiculous amount that it is hard to argue this.
Or maybe you visit the USA too much to qualify? In which case you do have enough ties that I think tax makes sense.
Though, I am curious, since my wife is a US citizen, and we are living in my home country; does the 200k if married limit count, if your spouse is a foreign citizen (like say, me)?
You might also think it is "ridiculous" because you only earn money from a paycheck (e.g. you are an employee). For the self-employed things look very different: your revenue might easily be $200k, while your actual income is half that. Your foreign business pays taxes on income, but claiming the same deductions in the US might be difficult or impossible, so you might end up paying taxes on your $200k of revenue.
More importantly, though, the amount of paperwork that the US requires (FATCA and FBAR reporting) is ridiculous. And preparing your US taxes if you are an expat is a minefield, there is no way you can do it yourself. You need help from experienced tax accountants. All in all, it is a significant burden.
> If the Department of Homeland Security determines that the renunciation is motivated by tax avoidance purposes, the individual will be found inadmissible to the United States under Section 212(a)(10)(E) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(10)(E)), as amended.
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
If you buy a house, things are going to be complicated.
If you have a workplace pension from your job, you're probably screwed. State pensions have screwed people too.
If you invest in stocks, or mutual funds, you'll pay more in tax preparation than you'll make.
If you set up your own company and are not paid as an employee but as the owner, you will be screwed.
Rent out a property, screwed.
Fail to declare every account that you're a signatory on? Prepare to pay up to 125% of the contents.
If you're children are beneficiaries of a trust set up by their non-american grand-parents? Totally screwed.
If your income is above $100k, you also have to fill out the AMT worksheet, which may result in you needing to calculate everything to deduct the foreign taxes you've paid.
If you have US stocks and sell them, you have to worry about paying capital gains taxes to the US (they consider this US income, regardless of if you received the stocks as part of your employment), and you generally have to pay taxes to the country you're living in for that as well. If you're lucky you might be able to deduct the US taxes or expected taxes, otherwise you might not be able to do so or might not be able to do so until the next year.
You also have to report your overseas accounts every year.
When I first moved overseas, yes, it was pretty simple to just fill out my 1040 and my form 2555. Last year I needed those plus the 1040 Schedule B and form 1116. Next year things will get even more complicated since this year I bought an apartment, so there's a mixture of rent deduction and mortgage deductions, plus a significant capital gains tax burden due to selling stocks for my down-payment on the apartment.
That the U.S. government makes demands of people living outside its borders is preposterous.
Immigrant is not a dirty word
All immigrants are expatriates, but not all expatriates are immigrants.
The term immigrant denotes someone who has left their native land permanently - that is, they never plan on moving back there. Many expatriates do plan on returning home, so calling them immigrants is inaccurate.
Please understand that anyone studying abroad, stationed overseas (either with the government or military), or working abroad is an expatriate - no matter where they're from and where they're living.
Of course once a government adds a tax it's very hard to eliminate it, so here I am still paying a Civil War tax, an American living in Switzerland.
Edit: I also want to add that you're referring to income taxes. Several European countries collect wealth tax on global assets.
An easy solution is to trade your US citizenship to a Swiss one. It takes just 5 years on permit C.
> Several European countries collect wealth tax on global assets.
Including Switzerland.
This is accurate, however, you need to spend at least 5 years in Switzerland to apply for a C permit and have been resident a minimum of 10 years in Switzerland in total, including the last 5 continuously. You'll also need to meet minimum cantonal and communal residency requirements, so if you move canton or even communue at 9 years 11 months, you'll probably have to wait another few years. The process itself will take a few years also.
After all that, you are still defined as a "US Person" for tax purposes and thus banks are required to disclose your information to the US. US Persons are any person with tax liability to the US. You're tax-liable as a citizen (also as a green card holder or possibly a married partner of a US citizen). So having spend 12-13 years minimum in Switzerland to get a passport, you then have to give up your US passport, which will take time and is also permanent.
Usually it doesn't take 12-13 years minimum with stringent residency requirements and the requirement to learn a foreign language to open a bank account ;)
All that said, it is my understanding that the PostFinance-only thing was a reaction to the Credit Suisse fine from 2014. After that, Swiss banks closed accounts and mortgages of Americans without warning as a way to avoid any future risk - a bit extreme, but they were in a legal pickle: Swiss law prohibits them from disclosing account information to anyone not at the bank and includes custodial sentences for the disclosing employee. There was thus no mechanism for disclosure to the US that was actually (at the time) legal in Switzerland. This has been remedied. Banking secrecy still exists, but banks are allowed to transfer information to the Confederation (Swiss Federal Government) and the Confederation can of course then transmit it onward to the relevant parties.
Even more bizarrely, the whole FATCA issue was mostly about wealthy US residents using offshore tax havens to avoid taxes, not your average expat who simply wants a bank account.
I believe that US expats can now open accounts at Swiss banks other than PostFinance again, although I caveat that statement by saying I'm not a US person.
Jokes aside, I totally understand why after the botched 2009 issue, Swiss banks just don't want to deal with Americans. We got screwed hard by the DOJ, and were bullied into going against our core principles. I don't have a lot of empathy for Americans not being able to get Swiss bank accounts after the USA fucked us over like that.
Why not? We don't blame the Swiss for this. This is clearly the fault of the US government and I think we can have sympathy with each other for being screwed over by one of the most powerful organizations on the planet.
I ended up getting a hotel for the night, bought a plane ticket to Germany the next day and another one from Germany to the US. I was offered a small refund for my round trip tickets from Poland to the US. Only person I could count on was myself that day.
So you would have liked the US to stand against Polish crap on your behalf?
What would you have expected the US to do? Smuggle you out of the country?
This is the only reason dual nationality is tolerated in the first place. Otherwise every dual citizen is a walking diplomatic disaster waiting to happen.
What if a shell corp is created in a country that is not included in the list of the ownership info automatic exchange? Instead of option A, someone could go with option B and would be fully protected:
Option A: Owner in the UK -> Swiss Bank account
Option B: Owner in the UK -> Shell corp & legal entity in a country not included in that list -> Swiss Bank account not on the name of the owner, but held by the shell corp/legal entity
The closest I can get to sources though: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/laundered-mo... https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcasts/current-affairs-informatio...
What is it due to? I imagine ease of access to Chinese people who want a place to park their savings, plus nice weather, are the biggest factors. After all, all those wealthy Chinese people could just go to another city, like Edmonton, but they don't: what kind of insane person would want to live in a place where it's -40 in the winter if they didn't grow up there?
- A large chinese community already being there, seeded by the HK hand over to china. The HK wave did not cause a real estate crisis.
- Being known as a "good investment" in China.
- RE firms that market in china for vancouver.
- Most importantly of all, bad enforcement of money laundering and foreign income laws compared to the USA.
If money laundering and tax laws were enforced as badly as Canada in the USA, I bet many of these chinese would be in the USA. The pacific north west is not considered a good place weather wise in the USA.
I get the need for lawyer-client confidentiality if you’re on trial for murder.
You don’t need it if you’re buying property.
Where did you get that crazy idea? The PNW is known for being mild, though rainy and not terribly warm. People who like a lot of sun wouldn't like it. But compared to most parts of the country, it's known for "good" weather: in the northeast, it's snowy and brutally cold during the winter. In the southeast, it's brutally hot and humid during the summer, and there's hurricanes. In the (desert) southwest, it's horrifically hot during the summer. In the middle/plains states, it's brutally cold in the winter and there's regular tornadoes. In the Dakotas/Minnesota area, it's horrifically cold in the winter. The PNW doesn't have any of that stuff. Compared to southern California, the weather may not seem as nice to many people, but most of the rest of America does not have the consistently mild and warm weather year-round that SoCal has. But PNW does have consistently mild weather year-round for the most part, albeit without so much sun, and a lot of rain.
Also bay area weather is pretty perfect too.
There's no data tracked though, and outside of the RCMP investigation there's basically no public information beyond speculation of possible causes.
Other than it's not population pressure. There's very large ties between Vancouver, India and China visibly - but nothing to the degree costs hit. I found living there that the influences of India and China helped moderate things and help the city be more liveable.
If they can strongarm the Swiss, why shouldn't they be able to do it to a lot of other countries who want to trade with USA+EU ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneficial_ownership
A lot of the offshore locations a laymen can name report this stuff anyway (to varying degrees of course).
The whole straight up hiding money approach(Or to put it in hn terms "security through obscurity") isn't really a thing anymore.
Possibly. You're not gonna get far moving your mountain of coin without the help of lawyers, accountants, investment bankers, banks, prime brokers etc.
...none of whom will touch you if you can't prove this stuff reasonably well.
As for people submitting straight up fraudulent info - rules don't stop people like that in the same way sternly telling a mugger that it's illegal won't stop them from taking your wallet. Checks & balances sure but beyond a certain level of illegality more rules achieve nothing.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/201...
Shareholder data for private companies aren't generally publicly searchable regardless of country...(hence the "private" part)
The UK, with their channel islands (and the BVI) are one of the biggest hypcrits when it comes to finger pointing regarding support of tax dodgers and plutocrats hiding their ill gotten gains.
Another convenient vehicle to hyde (pun intended) your dirty money is real estate via a shell company in the UK, mostly in London[2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/05/how-britain-ca...
[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2013/04/mysterious-...
However if the controller does not do his or her job properly or gets coerced by either the client or the asset manager to enter false or incomplete information this regulation is obviously not very effective and requires regular auditing by the authority (in the case of Switzerland FINMA which is the equivalent of the FTC)
There are much better and most importantly legal ways to “optimize taxes” than a simple shell corp. Some of these “corporate constructs” or however you want to call it use loopholes “double Irish with a dutch sandwich” is one of the most notorious ones.
Most of the time people get this wrong the other way. I've never seen the evasion->avoidance transposition. So, I thought I might share. No harm meant. :)
I think a lot of people don't realize that bank account privacy is just 1 of 20 distinctive qualities of Swiss institutions and regulatory structure.
Switzerland is attractive because its not just shell companies and PO boxes, compared to other nations that try to offer similar nominal regulations. Instead it has a vibrant regulatory system with competition amongst each state and no expensive federal government. As an example Google pays the same as it does in Silicon Valley, with employees being only subject state level tax. The state of Zug is a fintech hub with an income tax rate of 7%. Territorial only. The Swiss franc is currently pegged 1:1 with USD, having ditched Euro peg almost 5 years ago.
The regulators and public sector representatives are very accessible because everything happens at the sparsely populated state level, and they all operate under the swiss brand which includes access to the global financial system.
Switzerland is better thought of as a loose collection of sovereign states with a small national government. The concept may seem familiar but recognize how small all of Switzerland is and that has factored into why the national government never grew arbitrarily large to maintain cohesion and assume its own intrusive identity, and why direct representation has been possible there for almost 200 years (they did represenative democracy before that, like the US, but figured out how to remove it since the flaws were obvious and they're smaller)
Outside of finance and regulatory structure, Americans may also find the vibrant gun culture and visible military to be refreshing and familiar. A stark contrast to the ideals and vocal opinions that neighboring Europeans would have about guns as soon as they find out you're American, possibly unaware of what Switzerland offers and has offered for a very long time.
It's not.
Use whatever word you want to quickly convey that thought to a broad population
“Peg” also does that.
Over the last four years the EUR has moved in the range 1.06-1.20 CHF (a +/- 6.0% interval around the midpoint). The average rate is 1.117, the standard deviation 0.034 (3.1%).
Even though the exchange with the USD is slightly more stable in this case (it depends on the period and metric chosen) saying that it's pegged is an exaggeration.
By the way, the CHF was not pegged to the EUR either. There was a minimum rate set by the SNB at 1.20 but it floated as high as 1.26 in 2013.
Just before they abandoned the peg as too hard to maintian.
They abandoned the floor more that a year and a half later, in January 2015, when the exchange rate was back at 1.20 despite their efforts to keep CHF appreciation under control.
Thanks for the quantitative response, I just don't find it a productive conversation to what the point was.
(i'm swiss)
I believe there is no way in hell they could have passed this legislation if it included giving data of swiss citizens to the swiss government.
People here cherish their banking secrecy and it's still somewhat part of the national identity.
From a swiss point of view it was/is pretty much: The US is pressuring us too much, we'll have to give up banking secrecy, but only for foreigners.
If they didn't do that, i'm fairly certain it would have been shot down by the people with a referendum.
Exactly, this is also what neighboring Austria did a few years ago.
It is nice that Switzerland takes the attention for "banking secrecy" because other countries that have it in law get to fly under the radar.
As always, people that have better reading comprehension skills get their advantage.
If you even fake documents to avoid taxes, then you can end up in jail.
This system of "voluntary" tax declarations is like a contract between the government and the citizens: Government doesn't stick their nose into bank accounts of citizens, while citizens pay taxes on their assets. I'm not sure if it's a good system, but it has mostly worked out so far.
Hidden money cannot be spent and as soon as it surfaces you would have quite some explaining to do.
Secondly, at what point does it allow for the question of just how much government should be allowed to spend? The entire onus should not simply be placed on crushing tax avoidance, and a serious debate about the size, scope and sheer spending done by governments today needs to balance things out. This isn't an argument against social programs or helping the poor it's just a recognition of the basic fact that a tremendous amount of money extracted by states gets wasted on all sorts of immense bloat. We complain about bureaucratic mismanagement by various countries all the time but for some reason should applaud their obsessive efforts to crush any exit valves on abusive tax practices by them, and not just tax avoiders or evaders?
With the support of the G20 and the EU, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) therefore drew up international standards in 2014 to enable countries to exchange bank information automatically. More than a hundred countries have so far decided to adhere to these standards, almost half of which have already started to exchange information in 2017. Participating countries must undertake to treat the data they receive confidentially and only for tax purposes.
These rules also aim to create a level playing field for all financial centres by putting an end to tax havens. Countries - or territories - that do not meet the criteria set out in international standards or that are not cooperative are included in grey or black lists of the OECD and the EU. “Defensive measures", in other words sanctions, are envisaged against them.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2018/10/18/a...
Also at https://archive.is/lbO8j