Gerard Garcia-Gassull's Blog

Exchange of Tax Information between Switzerland and Spain



As I mentioned in previous articles, the world is becoming a place with no confidentiality, which is fine because it requires each of us to analyse our actions from other people's perspective, mainly our tax authorities’.

I hope you all had the chance to read the articles on FATCA and CRS (GATCA) so I will not insist again on these international collaborations.

What I am trying to explain is that the whole process is at lightning speed and the timetable I mentioned in those articles may be kept ahead of schedule.

In this sense, let me inform you that the Spanish tax authorities have requested to the Swiss tax authorities (and they have accepted) to compel the Union Bancaire Suisse (UBS) to provide all data on accounts opened by Spanish citizens in that bank between 2012 and 2015.

This request is based on the article on cooperation between tax authorities included in the Convention entered into with Switzerland 10 years ago. The old Tax Convention, did not include an information exchange clause but after an improvement proposal requested by the Swiss authorities about 15 years ago, the Spanish authorities seized the opportunity to include that cooperation.

The origin of this specific collaboration for the UBS is lies in an identical request submitted by the Dutch authorities a few months ago and which was rejected by UBS. The Dutch went to court and got a favourable resolution. 

| After the successful Dutch request, France also got a positive resolution and finally Spain did likewise. |


The issue shall not be limited to these countries and the UBS. In Switzerland there are around one hundred banks, but ten of them would be of most interest for tax authorities.

For other countries it may have it more complicated than for Spain, since some Tax Conventions include a list of conditions and requirements to be met to gain the collaboration (see paragraph 11, Tax Convention Protocol between Mexico and Switzerland).

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