28/10/2016 –Today at the OECD Headquarters in Paris, Mr. Andrew Haigh, Collector of Inland Revenue of the Cook Islands, signed the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters.

 

The Convention is the most powerful instrument for international tax cooperation. It provides for all forms of administrative assistance in tax matters: exchange of information on request, spontaneous exchange, automatic exchange, tax examinations abroad, simultaneous tax examinations and assistance in tax collection. It guarantees extensive safeguards for the protection of taxpayers' rights.

 

The Convention, together with the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information, which the Cook Islands signed in October 2015, will enable the Cook Islands to fulfil their commitment to begin the first of such exchanges by 2018.

 

The Convention can also be used to swiftly implement the transparency measures of the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project such as the automatic exchange of Country-by-Country reports under Action 13 as well as the sharing of rulings under Action 5 of the BEPS Project. The Convention is also a powerful tool in the fight against illicit financial flows.

 

The Convention was developed jointly by the OECD and the Council of Europe in 1988 and amended in 2010 to respond to the call by the G20 to align it to the international standard on exchange of information and to open it to all countries, thus ensuring that developing countries could benefit from the new more transparent environment.

 

The 106 jurisdictions participating in the Convention can be found at: www.oecd.org/ctp/exchange-of-tax-information/Status_of_convention.pdf

 

Media queries should be directed to Pascal Saint-Amans, Director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration (+33 6 26 30 49 23).