Double Tax and Info exchange deals: poor countries failed

Misereor has just produced an analysis entitled "Double Tax Treaties and Tax Information Exchange Agreements: What Advantages for Developing Countries?"

The article looks at the range of DTTs and TIEAs that have been signed around the world, through various filters, and contains much that is illuminating and new. Perhaps the most eye-catching finding is this one:

"Only 6 percent of DTTs show a signature of a Low Income Country (with an even smaller participation of 3 percent for Least Developed Countries). The situation with TIEAs is even worse: There is no single LIC (leaving aside LDC) as signing party of any TIEA documented on the OECD website."

And it reaches a damning conclusion:

"While G20 and OECD are promoting DTTs and TIEAs as centrepieces of a global standard on transparency and cooperation in tax matters statistics show that poor developing countries are simply left out in this picture. How these countries should get access to “the benefits of a new cooperative tax environment” (G20 London Summit) according to the recipes of the G20 and the OECD remains an open question."

Change is needed. See our series on information exchange, plus briefing paper, here.