In fact, this management measure is mainly aimed at the due diligence of financial accounts of non-China tax residents in China. It can be said that China tax residents are not the most affected. However, the international background of the Administrative Measures has a far-reaching impact on China tax residents who have financial assets outside China (such as mainland residents who buy a large amount of investment insurance in Hong Kong). This paper will introduce CRS (Common Reporting Standard), which makes countless financial institutions and rich people tremble. In the future, the world will enter the era of tax transparency, and China will also enter the era of real global taxation.
International tax action under the background of globalization
If laws and regulations are norms to regulate social behavior, then the continuous development of social and economic activities will force laws and regulations to be constantly updated, and so will taxation. With the acceleration of economic globalization, the assets of the world's richest people are all over the world. At this time, governments have found that it is increasingly serious for domestic taxpayers to hold and manage assets through overseas financial institutions and hide their income in overseas financial accounts to avoid the tax payment obligations of resident countries. At this time, the tax collection and management under the existing system can no longer meet the demand, and one of the difficulties in international tax collection and management has changed from avoiding "double taxation" to avoiding "double non-taxation". Therefore, it is urgent for all countries in the world to form joint tax supervision.
Unilateral action
The United States was the first to take action. Since 20 10, the United States has successively promulgated the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (hereinafter referred to as the FATCA Act) and its implementation rules in view of the situation that its residents hide their assets in overseas accounts to avoid paying taxes. According to the FATCA Act, financial institutions outside the United States need to provide information about accounts opened by Americans to the United States government, otherwise foreign financial institutions will be subject to 30% punitive withholding income tax when accepting money from the United States. More than 100 countries have signed relevant agreements and promised to fulfill relevant obligations. According to the latest statistics, the tax revenue obtained by the United States from overseas accounts that disclose information has exceeded $654.38+000 billion.
Governments all over the world can't sit still when they see that the United States has such strict supervision over the hidden assets of its residents overseas. For example, in 20 14, Britain also promulgated a bill (British Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories (UkCD and OT) Ordinance, hereinafter referred to as "Britain -CDOT"). Since 20 16, British subsidiaries and overseas colonies need to automatically collect and submit financial account information opened by British residents and their companies to the British tax authorities. The offshore islands it covers include our most common "tax havens", such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands and Bermuda.
From FATCA to UK -CDOT, we can see that these are transnational tax information exchanges implemented by unilateral countries to effectively ensure the tax declaration of overseas income of domestic residents. But unfortunately, not every country can achieve such influence. Therefore, the situation of multi-country cooperation and mutual assistance is imperative.
Bilateral action
Bilateral action is the most common way of international tax cooperation. There are more than 3,000 bilateral tax treaties in the world, all of which have provisions for exchanging tax information. However, unlike the automatic exchange of information required by FATCA in the United States, the information exchange stipulated in these existing bilateral tax treaties is based on application, that is, unless there are special circumstances, the competent authorities of both sides will not automatically receive the tax-related information of domestic taxpayers from each other. However, even this passive mode of cooperation has been rejected by one country, and that is Switzerland.
For a long time, Switzerland, as a country with the strictest bank secrecy law in the world, has attracted and managed the assets of many rich people around the world. Even though governments all over the world are staring at the customer assets information held by Swiss banks, any request that violates the bank secrecy law is rejected by Switzerland. Even when signing bilateral tax treaties with other countries, Switzerland has always had reservations about the common information exchange clause in Article 26.
However, such a strict door was pried open by tax cooperation. Since 2008, Swiss banks have been punished for hiding customers' assets. With the increasing voice of tax transparency around the world, under pressure, Switzerland decided to adopt the OECD standard in the information exchange clauses of newly signed or revised tax treaties after 2010/0, and made major concessions in the field of information exchange. That's not enough. The European Union and the United States hope that Swiss banks can more actively submit customers' financial information. Therefore, since September 20 1 1, Switzerland has successively signed bilateral Rubik's cube agreements with Germany, Britain, Austria and other European countries, which is regarded as another milestone in the field of information exchange. In 20 13, Switzerland and the United States signed an intergovernmental agreement on the implementation of FATCA, becoming the first country to sign the "Model II" agreement.
In this way, the Swiss banking industry has opened the door to customer asset information in the tax field, and it will hand over customer account information to the tax authorities of various countries that have signed the agreement. Since then, the Swiss banking industry is no longer famous for "helping customers hide their assets", but will attract customers with more professional services and stand tall in the world banking industry.
Countries with the strictest confidentiality mechanism for bank customer information in the world have made such concessions, and we have seen the dawn of global tax information exchange.
Multilateral action
Unilateral actions are hard to imitate, and bilateral actions are not enough. The world urgently needs multilateral cooperation, mutual assistance and win-win, and creates a transparent tax supervision environment.
As early as 20 10, the G20, which accounts for 80% of the world economy, entrusted the OECD to conduct a series of studies on international tax reform, hoping that all countries in the world could fulfill their commitment to global tax transparency by signing conventions and exchanging information.
To put it simply, this series of reforms mainly includes three actions: first, BEPS action plan (tax base erosion and profit transfer project), which changes international tax rules from an entity perspective; Second, the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Assistance in Tax Administration has changed the original mode of international tax cooperation from the perspective of international tax supervision; Third, the exchange of financial account information. OECD issued the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information on Tax Matters (hereinafter referred to as "AEOI Standard"), which further standardized the roles and obligations of financial institutions in tax information exchange.