STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 19 January 2015

[Demeter]

18. Japan to track down foreign accounts

http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Japan-to-track-down-foreign-accounts

Japan will gather information on residents' overseas financial holdings in an effort to keep tabs on wealthy people who exploit tax loopholes on an international scale. The National Tax Agency will work with counterparts around the world, including, significantly, authorities in tax havens. Some 16.3 billion yen ($138 million) in inherited overseas assets went unreported in Japan in the 2013 tax year, a more than sixfold increase from the previous year. The agency sees this as a serious problem. Starting in 2014, people with more than 50 million yen in overseas assets are required to report them for tax purposes. To strengthen enforcement, Japan will work with the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as well as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Isle of Man and other jurisdictions known for their few-questions-asked tax policies.

The National Tax Agency will collect information on deposits, brokerage accounts and other types of financial accounts. Such details will include names and addresses of account holders, account balances, and interest and dividend payments. By September of 2018, it hopes to assemble a picture of these accounts as of the end of the previous year. The agency will then update its information annually using online links with its overseas counterparts.

In return, Japan will provide the other countries with information on Japanese accounts held by their nationals. The government will seek to pass a bill in the coming parliamentary session that would require domestic financial institutions to hand over such data.

Many countries have bilateral agreements on sharing tax-related information, but they have mostly exchanged records of money transfers, not account balances. Moreover, these exchanges do not adhere to any fixed schedule and go by mail, making them ineffective for catching tax dodgers.