The final communique of the ninth meeting of the OECD’s Forum on Tax Administration (FTA), held in Dublin last week,  signalled the group’s intention to take ‘a significant step forward in global tax co-operation’.

 The FTA said it has agreed a strategy for systematic and enhanced co-operation between tax administrations, based on existing legal instruments that will allow countries to quickly understand and deal with global tax risks whenever and wherever they arise.

 There will be a new international platform called the Joint International Tax Shelter Information and Collaboration (JITSIC) Network to focus specifically on cross border tax avoidance, which will be open to all FTA members on a voluntary basis.

At the meeting, FTA members said they would invest ‘the resources necessary’ to implement the new standard on automatic exchange of information so that common, secure and effective transmission systems are in place. 

 The group has also agreed to improve the practical operation of the Mutual Agreement Procedure (MAP) so that issues of double taxation are addressed more quickly and efficiently, saying it has advanced work in this area which will be integrated with the result from the related 2015 BEPS action item.

The FTA has also published four papers as part of their plan to improve the quality of tax administration. The proposals include increasing use of self-service channels by taxpayers; improving the design of tax services for SMEs to encourage greater compliance; ways to measure tax compliance outcomes; and tax debt management.