Bahamas To Sign OECD Anti-Tax Avoidance Convention

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

01 June 2017

The Bahamas Government says it will sign up to the OECD's Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, joining 111 jurisdictions currently participating in the Convention.

The Convention provides for all possible forms of administrative co-operation between states in the assessment and collection of taxes, in particular with a view to combating tax avoidance and evasion. This co-operation ranges from exchange of information, including automatic exchanges, to the recovery of foreign tax claims.

According to the OECD, the Convention is seen as being the ideal instrument for swift implementation of the Common Reporting Standard for the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters developed by the OECD and G20 countries, as well as for the automatic exchange of country-by-country reports under the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project.

The Ministry of Finance said collaboration with industry stakeholders within the territory's financial services sector is ongoing, ahead of the 2018 deadline to implement the Common Reporting Standard through the Multilateral Convention.

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