IOTA Digital Workshop “Sharing of Experiences in Exchange of Tax Rulings”
On 26-27 June 2024, IOTA held another informative online activity from the IOTA 2024 Work Programme Calendar. The IOTA Digital Workshop “Sharing of Experiences in the Exchange of Tax Rulings (ETR)” featured speakers from the IOTA member tax administrations of Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Close to 100 participants from 29 IOTA countries joined the workshop online.
The online event was one of the initiatives proposed by the Subgroup of IOTA’s Forum on BEPS. The exchange of tax rulings (one form of exchange of information) affects many tax administrations; either through Council Directive 2015/2376/EU (DAC 3), or through BEPS Action 5, or both for EU member countries. The processing of the exchange of ETR data and its practical usage by tax administrations is a challenging issue and a matter of great debate.
This 2-day workshop provided an opportunity for IOTA members to share their experiences of challenges around the exchange of tax rulings, including problems, issues, and hurdles overcome during the exchanges and practical usage of the data exchanged. Thus, the aim was to identify and deepen participants’ understanding of the following topics:
- The effective implementation of the exchange of tax rulings;
- Approaches used concerning the efficient process of Exchange of Information on tax rulings (ETR) (i.e. identification/ classification, handling of the content of summaries, quality of data);
- Potential challenges or concerns faced by other IOTA’s tax administrations concerning ETR;
- Communication of IOTA members’ successful results from exploiting data received through the ETR.
On the first day of the digital workshop, the country presentations focused on describing the inbound ETR cycle with the following experts:
- Italy: Monica Acri;
- Sweden: Urban Jakobsson;
- United Kingdom: Tony Chanter.
Tony Chanter from the UK also presented the outbound ETR process from HMRC's perspective.
On the second day of the workshop real-life case scenarios of handling ETR were discussed by various tax administrations from IOTA. The following countries presented practical examples during this session:
- Sweden: “Practical Examples from a Swedish Perspective” presented by Urban Jakobsson;
- United Kingdom: “Practical Examples from a UK Perspective” presented by Tony Chanter;
- Italy: “Practical Examples from an Italian Perspective” presented by Monica Acri.
This was followed by a short panel discussion where the presenters were asked for feedback on the most significant challenges that they faced during their professional engagement with tax rulings.
All the workshop materials, presentations, and the event recording are now available on the event's webpage. This digital event was facilitated by the IOTA International Taxation Expert Alexandros Roukalis with support from his colleague Jonathan Heath. It was broadcast live via Microsoft Teams from the IOTA Secretariat.
