Legal Bases and Key Issues of Turkish-German Automatic Exchange of Information : Implementing the Standard in Turkey

The extent of the information subjected to automatic exchange under the scope of cross border tax administrative cooperation is increasing day by day. Nowadays, financial accounts, non-financial categories (such as changes of domicile, immovable property acquisitions and transfers, value added tax refunds, withholding taxes), cross border rulings, advance price agreements and country-by-country reports are subject to automatic exchange. However, this study will focus on one of them only: the automatic exchange of financial account information. At the Saint Petersburg Summit on 6 September 2013, the leaders of the G20 countries — Turkey and Germany among them — expressed both their commitment to the exchange of information as the new global standard, and their full support for the efforts of the OECD, (of which both Turkey and Germany are also members) in developing it. The standard, developed by the OECD, for the automatic exchange of financial information in tax matters was first endorsed by the Ministers of Finance and the Governors of the Central Banks of the G20 on 23 February 2014. In its 6 May 2014 declaration, OECD members and some non-member countries expressed their commitment to the swift implementation of the automatic exchange of information standard and its transposition into domestic laws. Following its approval by the OECD Council on 15 July 2014, a detailed commentary of the standard and its full text, which includes the technical solutions for the implementation of information exchange, were published under the title of “Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters”, thereby emulating the USA's systematic approach to this area. Accordingly, tax administrative cooperation for the automatic exchange of financial information between Turkey and Germany will be conducted according to the Standard. The present study assesses the steps taken by Turkey to implement such cooperation