San Marino And Italy Discuss TIEA

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

11 September 2009

The San Marino government has recently had discussions with the Italian Ministry of the Economy, Giulio Tremonti, and the Italian Revenue Agency aimed at concluding an agreement incorporating the OECD standard for the exchange of tax information.

After the initial discussions, the San Marino government underlined its intention to proceed further with the negotiations in Italy, and to remove the remaining barriers to an agreement before further meetings, probably to be held in mid-September. It was reported that Giulio Tremonti expected an agreement to be signed by the end of September.

It was reported that the questions that still required clarification included the incidence in San Marino of nameplate companies, falsely-declared residences and tax evasion. The San Marino government has said that it is working to provide all the necessary information to establish the actual position with regard to those matters. In an interview with the magazine ‘Economy’, Gabriele Gatti, San Marino’s Finance Secretary, said that, aside from the above information, all of the technical terms of the agreement with Italy have been agreed.

Subsequently, on 9 September, a meeting was held between San Marino’s Finance Department and the Italian Revenue Agency. Following the meeting, it was stated that one of the questions addressed was that of those Italian citizens who had been placed on the official Italian list of non-residents, but who are now declared as residents of San Marino. As a result of the agreement reached in the meeting, information on those residents is expected to be exchanged.

Further to the forthcoming G20 meeting, during the interview, Gabriele Gatti said that San Marino has only two current agreements that include the OECD standard for the exchange of tax information – with Monaco and Belgium. However, in the interview, he confirmed that San Marino has already made contact with various countries and there were negotiations at an advanced stage with France, Germany, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.

With other countries, such as Austria, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, Rumania and Cyprus, he said that there are agreements already in place which do not conform to the OECD standard; while the first approaches have been made with others, such as Argentina, Australia, Ireland, UK, Switzerland and the USA.

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