Continuing with its plan of signing tax exchange agreements with all British overseas territories and Crown dependencies, the UK has recently signed agreements with the Cayman Islands and Guernsey and Jersey.

The above agreements come after the UK and the Isle of Man signed an Inter Governmental Agreement (IGA) which was the first agreement of this type to be signed and published where neither party is the USA.

Guernsey and Jersey signed IGAs with the UK on the 22 October 2013 - the ‘UK-Guernsey Agreement to Improve International Tax Compliance’ and the ‘UK-Jersey Agreement to Improve International Tax Compliance’ - meaning that all the Crown Dependencies have now entered into automatic tax information exchange agreements with the UK.

Selected areas of draft guidance have been published alongside these agreements to give clarity on the key differences in scope. Further draft guidance relating to issues specific to the agreements will be published in full, along with draft regulations, later this year.

On 5 November 2013 the UK and the Cayman Islands signed the first IGA between the UK and an Overseas Territory - the ‘UK-Cayman Agreement to Improve International Tax Compliance’. This agreement is non-reciprocal, so UK financial institutions will not have further reporting obligations under the terms of this agreement.