End of Swiss banking tax haven on horizon due to new tax rules
The International Convention on the Automatic Exchange of Banking Information (AEOI) has ruled that financial information on Swiss bank accounts held by citizens of more than 100 participating countries will be collected this year and exchanged in 2018. Previously, Switzerland would only provide certain countries with banking information and would not guarantee full cooperation. However, a multi-billion dollar tax evasion case involving UBS led the Swiss parliament to approve the AEOI's deal in 2015. The collected data can only be used for tax collection efforts and cannot be made public.

Switzerland's reputation as a secretive tax haven looks set to end following the introduction of rules over sharing bank account data.

The International Convention on the Automatic Exchange of Banking Information (AEOI) entered into force on January 1, pulling Switzerland in to line with international standards on taxation.

The convention, developed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the global financial industry, states that financial information on Swiss bank accounts held by citizens of certain countries will in future be shared annually and on an automatic basis.

In the past, Switzerland would only provide banking information if requested by a limited number of countries and even then, full co-operation was not guaranteed.

The regime came under international pressure in 2008 after the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probed a multi-billion dollar tax evasion case involving the Swiss bank, UBS.

According to the Swiss State Secretariat for International Financial Matters, Switzerland will now start collecting data on 1 January 2017 and exchange it for the first time in 2018.