by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington
04 July 2016
The Dominican Republic and Nauru signed the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters on June 28, 2016.
The two countries are the 97th and 98th jurisdictions to sign the Convention. Nauru, a tiny island nation in Micronesia, has already deposited its instrument of ratification to bring the agreement into force for Nauru from October 1, 2016.
The Convention provides for all forms of administrative assistance in tax matters: exchange of information on request, spontaneous exchange, automatic exchange, tax examinations abroad, simultaneous tax examinations, and assistance in tax collection. It guarantees extensive safeguards for the protection of taxpayers‘ rights.
The Convention was developed jointly by the OECD and the Council of Europe in 1988 and amended in 2010 to respond to the call by the G20 to align it to the international standard on exchange of information and to open it to all countries. This was to ensure that developing countries could also benefit. Since then, the Convention has become a global instrument.
Nauru also became the 83rd signatory of the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on June 28, through which Nauru will automatically exchange financial account information from 2018.
