Switzerland has signed a series of agreements with the United States which allow the US tax authorities to obtain information on accounts held in the Swiss confederation by American owners. The agreement will have to be ratified by the Swiss Parliament and could be submitted to a popular referendum, while the government wants to make use of an accelerated ratification procedure which would allow it to be implemented as early as 2014 January XNUMX, thus preventing Swiss banks from running into heavy retaliation that the US threatened in the event of no agreement. The regulatory framework has been dubbed "Fatca" by Washington.
The agreement is more invasive on data covered by banking secrecy than the bilateral agreements that Switzerland is conducting with various European countries, including Italy. If the outlines of agreement in Europe provide for the preservation of banking secrecy, with the USA instead, with the prior consent of the holder, the transmission of bank data will proceed. In the absence of the account holders' consent, there will be data exchange procedures from which only a few limited types of financial products are excluded.
The US threatened to ban Swiss banks or impose heavy tariffs on them. In any case, according to Switzerland, "the agreement allows Swiss financial institutions to obtain facilitations in the implementation of US tax legislation", reads a statement from the federal administration.
