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Here you can access summary of the key current tax developments in Ireland, the UK and internationally as reported by Chartered Accountants Ireland

The report of key tax developments are displayed per year, per month, by Ireland, the UK or International and by report title

Action on beneficial ownership

The UK announced in April that it has entered into a deal with Germany, France, Italy and Spain to automatically share information on the ultimate owners of companies.

The agreement will see tax and law enforcement agencies from the five countries exchange data on company beneficial ownership registers and new registers of trusts, which it is intended will allow for more effective investigation of financial wrongdoing. The new agreement was unveiled at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund in Washington.

The European pilot will begin to explore the best way for countries to share this information, with a view to developing a truly global common standard in a two-step process leading to the interlinking of national registries.

A global exchange of beneficial ownership information will compound the effectiveness of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) which was launched as a result of the UK’s G8 presidency.

The CRS will see more than 90 countries, including overseas territories and the crown dependencies, automatically exchange taxpayer financial account information, giving HMRC access to the data of accounts held by UK taxpayers in these jurisdictions. The UK is already set to receive this information from its overseas territories and the crown dependencies in 2016.

From June 2016, the UK will be the first major country to have a register of company beneficial ownership in place. It has also decided to make the information public, which will be free for anyone to access.

The Chancellor George Osborne has also written to the UK’s G20 counterparts, along with Finance Ministers from Germany, France, Italy and Spain, urging progress towards a fully global exchange of beneficial ownership information in order to remove ‘the veil of secrecy under which criminals operate’. The letter suggests that the OECD, alongside the Financial Action Task Force should take a lead role in developing a new single global standard for such exchange and for the interlinking of registers.

A global move towards interlinking country registries will provide, for the first time, international real-time access to tax and law enforcement agencies on company ownership.