06 September 2013 (13:12 UTC-07 Tango)/01 Dhu ‘l-Qa’da 1434/15 Shahrivar 1391/02 Xin-You (8th month) 4711

“Global growth prospects for 2013 have been marked down repeatedly over the last year, global rebalancing is incomplete, regional growth disparities remain wide, and unemployment, particularly among youth, remains unacceptably high. Despite our actions, the recovery is too weak, and risks remain tilted to the downside. In the last months financial market volatility has increased.”

“We welcome the establishment of the G20/OECD BEPS project and we encourage all interested countries to participate. Profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created. In order to minimize BEPS, we call on member countries to examine how our own domestic laws contribute to BEPS and to ensure that international and our own tax rules do not allow or encourage multinational enterprises to reduce overall taxes paid by artificially shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions. We acknowledge that effective taxation of mobile income is one of the key challenges. We look forward to regular reporting on the development of proposals and recommendations to tackle the 15 issues identified in the Action Plan and commit to take the necessary individual and collective action with the paradigm of sovereignty taken into consideration.”

“We commend the progress recently achieved in the area of tax transparency and we fully endorse the OECD proposal for a truly global model for multilateral and bilateral automatic exchange of information. Calling on all other jurisdictions to join us by the earliest possible date, we are committed to automatic exchange of information as the new global standard, which must ensure confidentiality and the proper use of information exchanged, and we fully support the OECD work with G20 countries aimed at presenting such a new single global standard for automatic exchange of information by February 2014 and to finalizing technical modalities of effective automatic exchange by mid-2014. In parallel, we expect to begin to exchange information automatically on tax matters among G20 members by the end of 2015. We call on all countries to join the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters without further delay. We look forward to the practical and full implementation of the new standard on a global scale.“

“We recognize the importance of all countries benefitting from greater tax information exchange. We are committed to make automatic exchange of information attainable by all countries, including LICs, and will seek to provide capacity building support to them. We call on the Development Working Group in conjunction with the Finance Track, to work with the OECD, the Global Forum and other IOs to develop a roadmap showing how developing countries can overcome obstacles to participation in the emerging new standard in automatic exchange of information, and to assist them in meeting the standard in accordance with the action envisaged in the St Petersburg Development Outlook.”

“We welcome the progress achieved in developing policy recommendations for the oversight and regulation of the shadow banking system.”  Shadow banking can include those individuals who do not use banks and live off barter or cash only.  “We will ensure that this information is available in a timely fashion to law enforcement, tax collection agencies and other relevant authorities in accordance with the confidentiality legal requirements, for example through central registries or other appropriate mechanisms.”

“We support the ongoing efforts in the UN for the elaboration of the post-2015 development agenda.”