27/04/23

INTERNATIONAL TAX: OECD Body Sets Top Priority On Tax Transparency, Seeks Coordination Among Member Nations.

As published on menafn.com, Thursday 27 April, 2023.

Although the Asian region is disparate, all Asian members of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (known as Global Forum in short) have placed priority on tax transparency, in order to tackle tax evasion and achieve a sustainable recovery through enhanced tax co-operation.

This is the main summary of the "Tax Transparency in Asia 2023" report brought out by the Global Forum on Thursday.

With 167 members, the Global Forum is a leading international body working on the implementation of global transparency and exchange of information standards around the world. It comes under Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The report has been published for the first time since the launch of the Asia Initiative of Global Forum. It aims to show the Asian countries' progress in the last decade and to guide the future work of the Asia Initiative.

The report noted that though Asian members of the Global Forum have significantly expanded their exchange of information (EOI) networks, more requests for information on tax-related matters need to be generated by member nations.

It further said that while the number of Asian jurisdictions members of the Global Forum has grown in the past decade (to 22 members today), 11 Asian countries have not yet joined the leading international body working on the global implementation of the transparency and exchange of information standards.

"Although adherence to the international standards is wide in Asia, the effective use of the EOI standards is still uneven. Indeed, the number of EOI requests made and the level of commitment to the AEOI standard are still low in some countries, and some Asian members are therefore not fully benefitting from the tax transparency standards. This is particularly important in a post-Covid-19 pandemic context, where governments over the world need additional revenue to sustain their public services," it further said.