Switzerland joined the new tax standards back in 2014
As the portal Swissinfo.ch notes, with those states with which Switzerland has already signed and ratified such agreements, Bern will exchange banking information on an annual basis. This concerns the balances and movements on accounts of both foreign citizens in Switzerland and vice versa. The first tranche of exchange will be carried out from the beginning of 2018, but Switzerland will begin collecting account information already this year.
Switzerland joined the new tax standards (introduced in the format of the "Model Competent Authority Agreement" or "MCAA", establishing an administrative framework for the exchange of information between participating jurisdictions) in 2014 in order to maintain its position in the world as a leading financial center. In combination with existing agreements on legal assistance, such a "Model Agreement" will provide a reliable basis for the exchange of information on accounts of non-residents. In 2015, the country's parliament agreed to join the new standards, and in 2016, the relevant international legal documents underwent ratification.
Previously, Switzerland provided information on accounts of non-residents only to countries with which it had signed a double taxation agreement. Such an agreement did not provide any guarantees of successful cooperation in the fight against tax evasion. A country that claimed to receive information about the accounts of its citizens in Switzerland had to prove that the account holders were reasonably suspected of committing tax crimes (tax evasion). So-called "fishing expeditions," during which a foreign state could request and receive tax information without a specific reason for any number of its citizens with accounts in Switzerland, were impossible.
Now the situation will change dramatically, with one exception: Switzerland will not cooperate with foreign states if the request for tax data is based on stolen data. Something similar already happened in the recent case of theft of tax and banking data by an employee of the Geneva branch of HSBC. The data ended up in France, Paris provided the stolen information to the Indian authorities, and then itself turned to Switzerland with a request for legal assistance. Bern, however, did not cooperate with either Paris or Delhi.
One way or another, foreign states – primarily the 28 EU member states, as well as Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Norway, and South Korea – will now be spared the need to repeatedly approach Switzerland with requests for information on the Swiss accounts of their citizens. Once a year, these countries will receive the relevant data automatically, provided that it is not made available to the general public.
As for relations with the United States, Swiss banking secrecy ceased to exist back in 2015 after Switzerland began exchanging tax information with the United States under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which was passed by the U.S. Congress in March 2010.
Countries not belonging to the EU and OECD also have the opportunity to join the new standards on the basis of the "Model Competent Authority Agreement." Full access to the OECD standards on automatic exchange of financial account information (AIA), including regulation of taxation of trust funds, will remain closed to these countries (Russia in particular) for now, since such countries cannot guarantee, firstly, the collection of information on accounts of Swiss citizens in their banks, and also cannot ensure that tax and other "sensitive" data do not leak to the press.