UK to Promise Tax Info Deal With Poor Countries

We just blogged the UK government's willingness to put forward TJN's proposal for County by Country reporting. Now, from Reuters:

"Britain will promise on Wednesday to set up an agreement with developing countries to combat tax evasion by the end of the year, a finance ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

The proposal would provide a framework for developing countries, predominantly in Africa, to share information on possible tax evasion with Britain and each other without having to set up a series of bilateral agreements.

"The UK will commit to finalise a multilateral tax information exchange agreement by the end of the year with a variety of developing countries and will urge other developed nations to follow our lead," the spokesman said."

We await more details, but this looks like progress. Still, the model of Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) as espoused by the OECD and endorsed by OECD countries are woefully inadequate. Read more here.

Update: more details on this here. Timms' words do endorse the OECD's shabby and unacceptable "on request" standard.

"The immediate priority is getting a multilateral agreement signed so that developing countries do have access on request to the kind of information that they need," Timms said.

Why can't he just leave those two words -- "on request" out? One could be forgiven for thinking someone is leaning on him, to protect secrecy.