On 9 December, 2020 the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes of Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has published the Peer Review of the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information 2020 on the official web portal of OECD.
This Peer Review contains more detailed automatic exchange statistics of 2019, in accordance with which 94 participating jurisdictions have exchanged information on 84 million financial accounts, and the total value of assets kept on such accounts was approximately 10 trillion Euro.
It is expected that in 2020 the number of jurisdictions which exchange information in practice will increase by 11 in comparison with 2019, so that the total number of participating states and territories will raise to 105. In the same way, the estimated increase of bilateral exchanges between participating jurisdictions will be 15% (approximately 7 000 bilateral exchanges in 2020 against 6 100 ones in 2019).
The most part of Peer Review is dedicated to analysis of compliance of domestic and international legislation of participating jurisdictions with general automatic exchange requirements of OECD and the efficiency of its implementation in practice, in particular concerning the provision of information on financial accounts and its holders by financial institutions to the competent authorities.
88 of 100 jurisdictions which exchanged information in 2017 and 2018 have all necessary legal framework in place already. Nevertheless, among those 88 jurisdictions OECD marked 34 states and territories which need to improve their legislation in order to comply with automatic exchange standard fully. Such EU Member States as Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Monaco, the Netherlands, Poland appear in this list, as well as some offshores (Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Seychelles and Saint Lucia) and other states (Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland, Japan).
12 remaining jurisdictions have not formed legal framework necessary for automatic exchange yet, i.e. they are still on the stage of creation or adoption of appropriate legal acts. These jurisdictions are Aruba, Azerbaijan, Belize, Grenada, Dominica, Costa Rica, Curacao, Israel, Macau, Romania, Sint Maarten and Trinidad and Tobago.
OECD informs that the monitoring of legislation in jurisdictions participating in automatic exchange and automatic exchange statistics calculation will continue, and more, in 2022 it is planned to issue detailed report on efficiency of practices to receive and to deliver information in different states and territories, participating in automatic exchange.