Calendrier du 10 septembre 2024
Applied Economics Lunch Seminar
Du 10/09/2024 de 12:30 à 13:30
R2-21
BOMARE Jeanne ()
When Bankers become Informants: Behavioral Effects of Automatic Exchange of Information
écrit avec Matt Collin (EU Tax Observatory)
Over the past decade, around 100 jurisdictions have signed automatic exchange of bank information agreements (AEOI) in an effort to battle cross-border tax evasion. This paper uses account data leaked from an Isle of Man bank to study the effectiveness of these agreements. We establish three sets of results. First, we find that AEOI treaties do not legally cover a large share of assets held offshore. These legal loopholes mean that a large share of offshore users is actually not subject to any reporting requirement. Second, we observe that banks in charge of reporting appear to correctly identify most reportable accounts and to communicate this information truthfully to tax authorities. The quality of reporting is better for individual accounts than for company accounts, either because of complexity or because of non-compliance by the bank. Third, we find evidence that clients of the bank who were more at risk of being reported on preemptively closed their accounts, potentially circumventing the AEOI reporting process. This paper sheds light on the design flaws of AEOI agreements, and provides new evidence on how sophisticated individuals ultimately avoided this new transparency shock.