Topical problems of the tax secrecy

The authors discuss the issues concerning the implementation of the automatic intergovernmental exchange of tax information in the Russian Federation. This implementation presupposes that Russia should amend its domestic tax legislation accordingly. The most crucial issue is the conformity of the Russian law with Russia's international obligations in respect to the following terms: "tax secrecy", "regime of tax confidentiality". States have envisaged various criteria for determining whether or not certain data constitutes a tax secret, and for imposing responsibility for violating the regime. The effective implementation of the Common reporting standard requires establishing a unified regime of tax confidentiality. This, in its turn, means that the participating States should similarly define the scope of data falling within the notion of tax secrecy. This prompts the conclusion that the Russian law should be amended to cover all the information received from other jurisdictions.