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Two Tax Havens Agree to “Share” Information

August 26, 2009

By Clark Gascoigne

Clark Gascoigne is the Communications Director at Global Financial Integrity in Washington, DC.

Richard Murphy has pointed out that Switzerland has signed its second tax information exchange agreement with… Luxembourg. That’s right, Switzerland is now 1/6 of the way to being squeaky-clean because it signed an agreement (and a weak one at that) with another tax haven. As Richard says, this amounts to: “You look one way and I’ll look the other.” From Swissinfo:

Switzerland on Tuesday signed a revised double taxation agreement with Luxembourg, easing the restrictions on the exchange of tax information between the two countries.

It is the second of 12 such agreements Switzerland needs to sign in order to be removed from the “grey list” of tax havens established in April by the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Priceless.

Disclaimer: Unless specifically stated to be the views of the Task Force, the opinions expressed on this blog are solely the opinions of the individual blogger and are not necessarily those of the Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development.

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