TIRANA, Oct. 28 – A new draft law that will include Albania in the system of information exchange on offshore accounts, involving balance sheets of accounts and assets, is to be discussed in the Parliament during the following weeks. The Draft Law ‘On the automatic exchange of information on financial accounts’ seeks to create efficient means to implement a system of information exchange in accordance to the Common Reporting Standard and the multilateral agreement between the competent authorities for the automatic information exchange of financial accounts, approved by the Council of Ministers Decision no.178, date 9.3.2016.
According to the newly established global standard, a wide range of information on offshore accounts will be exchanged, including the balance sheets of accounts and assets. This will facilitate the prevention of tax evasion and tax fraud, as they not only decrease public revenue, but add to the burden on regular taxpayers. This is not the first step that Albania has taken to achieve similar standards; the country has been a member of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes since November of 2012. The Global Forum is the largest international organisation in the field of information exchange for tax purposes against fiscal evasion, supported by G20. Its most important project is the Peer Review, which is drafted for each of the member states and involves the careful assessment of the legal framework and regulatory bodies as well as the practice of the tax information exchange system.
After the legal framework and regulatory bodies assessment, Albania was evaluated by the Forum regarding the second phase which involves the implementation of the standards in practice. The Forum recommended the drafting of primary and secondary legal acts towards the implementation of the automatic exchange of information between the countries which have signed the multilateral agreement; the Common Reporting Standard aims to engage member countries in the increase of transparency of the tax system.
Moreover, Albania also signed the multilateral agreement between the competent authorities, pursuant to Article 6 ‘The automatic exchange of information’ of the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, which Albania ratified through Law 146/2013, date 6.5.2013. Through this common agreement on a global standard, the signing countries are able to go through with the implementation of an information exchange system which fightsand prevents tax evasion on a larger scale.
