As G20 ministers welcomed a new global standard in automatic tax information exchange and called on the governments of financial centres to sign up to new international tax information sharing agreements, HMRC launched a new campaign targeting taxpayers with money hidden in offshore accounts.

Last year, the UK entered into new information-sharing agreements with the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories which will provide HMRC with access to more data than ever before on offshore accounts held by UK taxpayers.

The UK, following an agreement reached last year with France, Germany, Italy and Spain, will also move quickly to implement the new global standard on a multilateral basis. So far 42 countries and jurisdictions have joined this initiative which will lead to the rapid embedding of the new global standard and aims to remove hiding places for tax evaders as HMRC uses new information to clamp down on tax evasion.

The launch of the campaign follows the G20 group of finance ministers’ further demonstration of its shared commitment to tackling global tax avoidance and evasion through agreements made at the G20 meeting in Australia in February.