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Comment by nickh | Hacker News Reader

Switzerland has NOT decided to "end secret bank accounts".

From a BBC News article:

"while it will now abide by international rules on bank data sharing, it said it would only respond to "concrete and justified" requests." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7941717.stm

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'The end of the banking secret' was yesterday's headline of 'le temps', the most serious newspaper of the french speaking part of Switzerland. I didn't read the paper, but I watched a debate on television. The main thing that changes is that Switzerland drops the distinction between tax evasion (not mentioning some of your money) and tax fraud (forging documents). Now both are illegal.

This article is weird, it quotes the times of london as its source and gets the capital of Switzerland wrong (it's Berne, not Zurich).

Plus - This isn't really huge news, and the reputation of Swiss bank secrecy is a little outdated - e.g. The US and Swiss authorities have been co-operating around Tax information for some time. Similarly, it's still incumbent on the Swiss to track and act on illegal flows of money (and they do).... It's still far from transparent, but it's not the citadel that some people think.

The main reason for this major change is that even in the presence of information-sharing provisions of treaties, Switzerland refused to provide any information on most account holders that were evading US (or other countries') taxes, on the rationale that evading non-Swiss tax was not a criminal offense in Switzerland. Cooperation was virtually nil, especially in the tax arena.

Depending on the scope of the changes, this could be huge news.

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