Global Forum Members Raise £18.3bn in Extra Tax Revenue

Participants in the Global Forum’s Asia Initiative have successfully raised at least €21.8 billion (£18.3 billion) in additional revenue (tax, interest and penalties) since 2009 through the use of exchange of information on request (EOIR) and automatic exchange of financial account information (AEOI). This includes related voluntary disclosure programmes and offshore tax investigations, the organisation said.

Tax Transparency in Asia 2024 helped 13 jurisdictions to collect at least €1.8 billion extra tax revenue in 2023 through the use of EOIR (€1.5 billion) and AEOI (€277 million).

The report also said that:

• through the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MAAC), Asian jurisdictions have entered into more than 3,000 EOI bilateral relationships to foster tax co-operation.
• 18 Asian jurisdictions are committed to start automatically exchanging financial account information by 2026, and 15 had already started exchanging by the end of 2023.
• six members of the Asia Initiative (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Japan, Korea and Singapore) are part of the 58 jurisdictions that expressed their intention to implement the Crypto Assets Reporting Framework (CARF) by 2028.

“Asian jurisdictions are advancing the tax transparency agenda and reaping its benefits. While the progress achieved are impressive, not all jurisdictions are taking advantage of these advances,” said Zayda Manatta, Head of the Global Forum Secretariat. “The Global Forum is committed to assist all its members in implementing and benefiting from the international tax transparency standards. I hope we will see more jurisdictions joining the fight against tax evasion in the near future, to ensure the fairness of their tax systems.”

The Global Forum – full name the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes – is the leading multilateral body mandated to ensure that jurisdictions around the world adhere to and effectively implement both the exchange of information on request standard and the standard of automatic exchange of information. It has 171 members.

“The Global Forum is committed to assist all its members in implementing and benefiting from the international tax transparency standards. I hope we will see more jurisdictions joining the fight against tax evasion in the near future, to ensure the fairness of their tax systems.”

Zayda Manatta, Head of the Global Forum Secretariat