European Commission urges EU-wide exchange of income data

PanARMENIAN.Net - The head of the European Commission has told the European Parliament he wants EU-wide exchange of income data as part of the fight against tax evasion.

Jose Manuel Barroso said he would urge the summit of EU leaders to support automatic exchange of people's earnings data between tax authorities.

Tax evasion costs EU states 1tn euros ($1.3tn) a year, more than was spent on healthcare in 2008. MEPs are expected to call for a Europe-wide blacklist of tax havens.

Pressure is likely to be put on Switzerland to relax banking secrecy amid anger over revelations about Greek and French politicians holding secret Swiss bank accounts.

The debate comes a day after UK Prime Minister David Cameron urged British overseas territories which operate low-tax regimes to "get their house in order" and sign up to international treaties on tax.

The UK is also expected to push for tighter tax measures at the G8 summit in June.

In his speech to the parliament, Barroso asked: "How can we explain to honest households and businesses who are feeling the squeeze yet still paying their fair share of taxes, that there are other parts of society and enterprise who are deliberately avoiding paying up?"

A trillion euros was, he said, "a huge amount of money to simply let through the net".

He said he would make a call at the summit of EU leaders for the EU to adopt automatic exchange of income information on January 1, 2015.

"I want to see this principle of automatic exchange become the standard at international level as well, and we will continue to work together with international partners to keep up the momentum on this," he said.

Last week EU finance ministers agreed to start talks with Switzerland, along with Liechtenstein, Monaco, Andorra and San Marino, on swapping bank account information.

Attempts to tighten up on tax evasion follow a furor in Greece over the so-called Lagarde list, containing the names of more than 2,000 Greeks including senior politicians with Swiss bank accounts.

More recently, France's Socialist government was hit by a scandal, as former Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac was forced to resign over tax fraud allegations.

He later admitted that he had hidden about 600,000 euros in a Swiss bank account.