Swiss banks ready to tax foreign clients

PTI, May 30, 2010, 01.40pm IST

NEW DELHI: Swiss banks have offered to tax the money deposited with them by Indians and other foreigners and "immediately deliver the cash" to governments of respective countries, rather than sharing the details of their clients.

For over a year now, Switzerland is being pressed hard by the global community for giving access to details of black
money stashed in their banks and it has been a big political issue here as many Indians are reported to have parked their unaccounted wealth in Swiss banks.

Probably buckling under international pressure, Swiss banks have now offered to tax their foreign clients' assets
but are still cautious about sharing the details of their customer on the grounds of privacy.

"The Swiss Bankers Association is convinced that the flat-rate withholding tax model it is proposing is a much more
efficient way to ensure tax compliance than any system of automatic information exchange," a top SBA official said.

Admitting that withholding taxes would have the advantage of safeguarding the privacy of individual, the official said 'an automatic exchange of information', as demanded by some countries, would not throw much light on the revenue to be generated by such exchange.

"By contrast, the flat-rate withholding tax model would immediately deliver cash," the official said, and added the
proposal is already generating interest among the European countries having been consulted so far. The official, however, did not elaborate on whether India has been consulted or not.

Besides India, many other countries are also said to be looking at similar treaties, while the US last year had
reached an agreement for giving access to close to 4,450 bank accounts of Americans with Swiss banking major UBS.

As an alternative to information exchange, Swiss banks have mooted the idea of a 'universal withholding tax'--wherein they would tax the earnings from foreigners deposits and transfer the proceeds to the governments of the country concerned--and is currently discussing the same with the relevant authorities.

When asked about the proposal and its applicability to the wealth deposited by Indians in Switzerland, the SBA
spokesperson had last September said it would be discussed with the Swiss authorities. In its latest paper detailing
future strategies for the banking sector, SBA said it rejected the concept of a "fully transparent bank client".

"Swiss banks have developed a comprehensive flat-rate tax solution model as an equivalent solution to automatic exchange of information. The model allows all taxable investment income and capital gains to be recorded in accordance with the tax law of the treaty state concerned and the tax payable on them to be withheld and transferred anonymously to the responsible tax authorities," the paper noted.

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