Switzerland's tax authorities have transferred about 1,5 billion francs (1,2 billion euros) to the United Kingdom and Austria since the beginning of the year in the name of the anti-avoidance agreement that entered into force on 446,6 January last. As emerges from the data provided by the Federal Tax Administration, the tax recovery for the United Kingdom amounted to 9 million pounds on total assets of 28 billion, based on 695,8 communications, while for Austria the recovery totaled 5,5 million euros against assets for a total of 19 billion, with over XNUMX thousand communications.
In July, the Swiss administration sent the amounts deriving from the regularization of undeclared assets to the tax authorities of the two countries for the first time. The agreement on withholding tax concluded by Bern with London and Vienna concerns all British and Austrian taxpayers with a bank account or a securities custody account in Switzerland to solve – at the base – the problem of tax evasion on assets held across borders. There are two options available for taxpayers traveling abroad: pay a tax at source, deducted directly from the account and transmitted anonymously to the country of domicile or reveal the data relating to one's account.
A similar agreement signed with Germany was rejected by the German Parliament. Italy had agreed with Switzerland on a dialogue on financial and fiscal issues in May 2012′, at the time of the Monti government. In October, Economy Minister Fabrizio Saccomanni and his Swiss federal counterpart Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf met in Washington during the G20 Finance meeting and – as indicated by the Swiss side – they agreed that the tax negotiations must go ahead. Switzerland's ratification of the OECD convention for the exchange of tax information, which paves the way for bilateral agreements between individual countries, has also facilitated the resumption of dialogue.
