The Treasury has confirmed that the UK will sign up to the new data exchange process, joining a list of 25 countries agreeing to share information on property ownership.

This will facilitate the automatic exchange of readily available information between tax authorities on property and real estate, helping to tackle offshore tax avoidance and evasion.

The automatic exchange of offshore property data is the latest OECD measure to tackle the problem of tax transparency, and is officially called the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Readily Available Information on Immovable Property (IPI MCAA).