EU removes Switzerland from its watch list
Tabea Lorenz
Switzerland meets international tax standards and implements them. The European Union is now acknowledging this and removing Switzerland from its watch list. The amendment shall enter into force upon publication of the revised Annexes in the Official Journal of the EU.
Since December 2017, Switzerland has been on an EU list of third countries that had committed themselves to comply with international tax standards but had not yet achieved full implementation of the rules - the so-called grey list. As early as October 2014, Switzerland and the 28 EU member states had signed a common understanding on company taxation. Switzerland undertook to abolish the tax regimes mentioned above. In return, the EU member states reaffirmed their intention to repeal any countermeasures taken after the abolition of the regimes in question.
With the introduction of the STAF (cf. the taxlawblog contribution of 19 May 2019), Switzerland is fulfilling the obligations it entered into in the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2014. The Finance and Economy Ministers of the EU Member States acknowledged this progress and decided at their meeting on 10 October 2019 to remove Switzerland from its tax list.
The communication of the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters of 10 October 2019 is available here.
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