The BRICs and International Tax Governance: The Case of Automatic Exchange of Information

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the BRICs’ involvement in the adoption of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI) by the G20 and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a major breakthrough in the global fight against tax evasion. Our main questions concern the BRICs’ willingness to accept AEoI, and their agreement to the Western-dominated OECD as its institutional forum. First, we examine the domestic drivers for BRICs’ participation, as their statist model of capitalism reveals strong disincentives to join this regime and the fact that the budgetary consequences of the global financial crisis were less severe than in Western states. We argue that their agreement on AEoI results more from their persistent balance-of-payments vulnerability to illicit capital than from fiscal weakness, while also discussing the possibilities for mock compliance. Second, we review the role of the non-reciprocal US foreign account tax compliance act (FATCA) in shaping the BRICs’ preference for a multilateral AEoI-regime centred around the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard (CRS). Last, we show that the BRICs’ acceptance of the OECD resulted from pragmatic interests and receiving ownership over the process, together with the absence of coercive mechanisms within the CRS-regime that could fundamentally undermine their sovereignty in this domain.     

The Big Bang: Tax Evasion After Automatic Exchange of Information Under FATCA and CRS

ABSTRACT

After decades of ineffective attempts to fight tax evasion, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) recently implemented the first encompassing international exchange of tax-related information on an automatic basis. This is an important development because tax evasion contributes to rising socio-political inequality and political sovereignty losses. This article assesses the treaties’ impact on tax evasion by conducting a difference-in-difference analysis of cross-border asset data. The results show that the treaties are successful. Household assets in tax havens that are not hidden behind corporate identities are estimated to be 67 per cent lower than they would have been without automatic exchange of information. Furthermore, this reduction is not offset by an increase in treaty circumvention using identity concealment or asset shifting to non-compliant jurisdictions. FATCA and CRS thus implement the first effective international cooperation against tax evasion. The results imply that political globalisation is capable to mitigate the political sovereignty losses and rise of inequality caused by economic globalisation.     

美国海外账户纳税法案对中国金融监管 的影响及启示

2014年7月1日,《美国海外账户纳税法案》（FATCA）在美国国会通过四年后正式 生效,该法案旨在打击美国纳税人利用海外账户的逃税行为,全球有超过8万家金融机构将受 此法案影响。该法案涉及美国税收监管域外管辖权与跨国税务信息共享、跨境金融监管、金融 企业公司治理和信息披露等重大问题,包括中国在内的全球110多个国家或地区已经与美国正 式或初步签署了有关协议。本文对该法案主要内容、实施进展及对我国金融监管的影响进行了 研究,提出了有关政策建议。