The United Arab Emirates is the 109th country to become a party to the Multilateral Agreement on Mutual Administrative Assistance on tax matters launched by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The international organization made the announcement by reporting the news of the signing of the document by the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates in France, in the presence of the Deputy Secretary-General of the EOCD, Rintaro Tamaki.
Jointly drafted by the OECD and the Council of Europe, the Convention ‒ which was initially open to the signing of the Member States of both organizations on 25 January 1988, and subsequently amended by the 2010 Protocol ‒ will enter into force in the United Arab Emirates on 1 January 2018. Its aim is to harmonize international standards in information exchange for tax purposes, providing for an administrative cooperation between Countries with regard to the assessment and the collection of taxes and aiming at tackling tax avoidance and evasion.
The rapid increase in signatures and ratifications of the Convention is to be seen as a sign of the overall strengthening of the objective of transparency. In fact, the Convention represents an additional instrument to the current provisions contained in double-taxation agreements and in bilateral agreements on exchange of information in tax matters, and aims at helping individual Governments to ensure tax compliance, by providing new forms of data exchange, assistance in revenue collection, service of documents, etc. in order to facilitate joint controls and information sharing.
(Bologna Office – Linda Tontodonati – 0039 (0)51 2750020)
