Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAS)

[Offshore]

For those of you looking for offshore banks, you must keep in mind if your Country has any agreement for sharing information. Lately, Citizens from Argentina were doing business from Andorra and as of October 2009 they have signed an agreement to disclose information.

Model agreement on exchange of information on tax matters, developed by the OECD Global Forum Working Group on Effective Exchange of Information.
Automatic exchange of information (also called routine exchange by some countries) involves the systematic and periodic transmission of “bulk” taxpayer information by the source country to the residence country concerning various categories of income (e.g. dividends, interest, royalties, salaries, pensions, etc).

Recent bilateral agreements (by date of signature) (2009)

Ecuador has no intentions of signing any tax treaties with the high tax police states. Other countries who are not signing are as follows: Russian Federation, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Abu Dabi, Qatar, Ukraine, Lithuania, Nigeria, North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Suriname. Ghana, Egypt, Jordan, Jamaica, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Yemen, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Romania, Bulgaria, Uzbekistan, Kazahkstan, Georgia, Azerbaljan, Turkmenistan, Peru, Paraguay, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and many African under developed nations.
Panama is not signing anything.
Panama is one of the very few countries in the world that has never signed any sort of tax treaty. No TIEA, no double taxation, no tax treaty of any sort. In Panama all tax offenses are civil including tax fraud. When one country requests information relating to a crime there is a principle applied called dual criminality. Dual criminality means that the crime in question must be a crime in both countries. The dual criminality provisions provide safeguards to prevent abuses. Since Panama has no crimes pertaining to taxes this is not an issue in Panama.