Italy-Switzerland : goodbye forever bank secret

The exchange of tax information between Italy and Switzerland is officially operational. By notification through diplomatic channels, of the Milan Protocol of 23 February 2015 – which took place on July 13 but only made public Thursday, July 28 for an inconvenience in operation rituals – is in full force and effect of the strengthened tax rogatory mechanism, in changing the historic Swiss-Italian Convention of 1976 preventing double taxation.

The first, epochal consequence is that Switzerland will no longer object to the Italian tax authorities on banking secrecy. The tax cooperation is extended to all so-called "Information likely relevant to the administration and / or the application of domestic law concerning taxes of every kind and description, levied in Italy or Switzerland."

The information is completely protected from the viewpoint of privacy in accordance with national law, they shall only be communicated to the authorities that deal with fiscal controls and can only be used for these purposes. They can be detected only in the course of legal proceedings.

A leap forward substantially since, according to the previous text, cooperation was limited to the information necessary to avoid abuse of the Convention.