Ireland has signed up to a collective agreement with other OECD countries to exchange information on immovable property as part of efforts to combat tax evasion.
The move will effectively see Revenue share information with other countries to ensure better cross-border access to information on property assets held and income derived from abroad.
The initiative is designed to enforce tax laws more efficiently and deliver tax transparency.
A joint statement on the matter was issued on Thursday by Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Lithuania, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Gibraltar.
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“In recent years, tax policy developments have greatly enhanced cross-border exchanges of tax information and international cooperation between tax administrations, combating offshore tax non-compliance and tax secrecy on financial accounts,” it said.
“This includes delivering transparency through automatic exchange of financial assets (through the common reporting standard) and crypto-assets (through the crypto-asset reporting framework).
“Despite these significant advances in automatic exchange of information, there is not yet a mechanism for jurisdictions to exchange information on non-financial assets, especially immovable property.”
The statement said the move was about “recognising that ownership and transactions involving immovable property often have cross-border elements”.
“We acknowledge the need for improved mechanisms to ensure that tax authorities have access to relevant information on immovable property assets held and income derived therefrom abroad to enforce tax laws effectively,” the countries said.
“We therefore welcome the new Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Readily Available Information on Immovable Property (IPI MCAA) between tax authorities developed by the OECD.”
The “broad adoption” of the initiative was described as “an important step” towards delivering tax transparency on non-financial assets.
“It will strengthen our ability to monitor and enforce tax compliance, and to combat tax evasion, which undermines public revenues and unfairly shifts the tax burden onto compliant taxpayers,” the joint statement said.
“We aim to join the IPI MCAA by 2029 or 2030, subject to domestic procedures as applicable. We also encourage other jurisdictions to join this initiative in the collective effort to promote transparency, fairness and efficiency in global taxation.”
Minister for Finance Simon Harris welcomed the move. “Through the commitment made in this statement, Ireland will become an early adopter of an important tax transparency initiative which may be a foundation on which further action can be built,” he said.
