Singapore to ink agreements to enhance tax cooperation on exchange of information

SINGAPORE will be inking two agreements to enhance tax cooperation on the exchange of information.

The Multilateral Competent Authority Agreements (MCAAs) on the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information under the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and the Exchange of Country-by-Country (CbC) Reports will be signed in the Netherlands late on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Finance (MOF), which issued the announcement earlier on Wednesday, said these agreements reaffirm Singapore's commitment to the international standards on tax cooperation.

With the signing of the MCAAs, Singapore will continue to abide by the principles for establishing bilateral Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) relationships for both CRS and CbC. The principles are: the AEOI partner has the safeguards needed to ensure the confidentiality of information exchanged and prevent its unauthorised use; and there is full reciprocity with the AEOI partner in terms of information exchanged.

In the case of CRS, Singapore will also want to ensure that there is a level playing field among all major financial centres, MOF said. Singapore will consider engaging in the automatic exchange of financial account information with regional jurisdictions that have the safeguards to ensure the confidentiality of information exchanged, and have similar agreements in place with relevant financial centres, including Hong Kong and Switzerland.