New Delhi: In a major fillip to efforts to stop blackmoney flowing overseas, India will automatically start getting financial information of accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland from 2018 and onwards. However, this information will start flowing to Indian authorities from September 2019.
India and Switzerland on Tuesday signed a joint declaration for the implementation of Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) between the two countries. The agreement does not apply to accounts held before 2018.
“As a result, it will now be possible for India to receive from September, 2019 onwards, the financial information of accounts held by Indian residents in Switzerland for 2018 and subsequent years, on an automatic basis,” said CBDT.
While Switzerland has conformed to the global standards on automatic exchange of information with the signing of the declaration, India, on its part, has promised to safeguard the confidentiality of the data. Revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia said that the signing of the agreement is a “big step.”
“The income tax department will be able to obtain information from accounts of all Indians stashed in Switzerland from 2018 onwards,” tweeted Mr Adhia.
Switzerland had been a favourite destination of dictators, corrupt politicians and businessmen to stash their illegal money due to country's secrecy laws which protects the privacy of bank clients. However, recently Swiss authorities have been under pressure from nations including the US to reveal identity of their nationals stashing blackmoney there.
