Since Singapore is keen to avoid the spotlight after Switzerland and other tax friendly centers have been heavily criticized by the media recently, the Southeast Asian city-state said that it will sign up to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developments (OECD) multilateral treaty on sharing tax details.
A joint statement by the central bank and the tax authority said that the tax office, the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore, will not need a court order to acquire information from banks and trust companies by foreign governments.
Singapore, which has offices of some of the world largest banks, will adopt the OECD standards on information sharing in all of its existing bilateral tax agreements that do not already have them, as long as the other state does the same.
Once Singapore puts this OECD measures in place, it will meet the international standards on tax information sharing with up to 84 different jurisdictions, up from the current of 41. Those new countries now include Brazil and the U.S.
Singapore has also recently been implementing stricter rules that push financial institutions to identify accounts that they believe could hold fraudulent or willful tax evasion, and to close them by July 1.
After July 1st 2013, handling the proceeds of tax evasion will be a criminal offense due to Singapore's new anti-money laundering law.
