The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has signed an international tax agreement – Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters(MAC), which is now seen as the ‘gold standard’ for co-operation in tax administration.
With this move, UAE has become the 109th jurisdiction to join the most powerful multilateral treaty against offshore tax evasion and avoidance.
At the OECD headquarters in Paris on Friday, Muadid Hareb Mughair Al-Khaili, Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to France, signed the multilateral pact in the presence of the OECD Deputy Secretary-General, Rintaro Tamaki.
The MAC is the most comprehensive multilateral instrument available for all forms of tax co-operation to tackle tax evasion and avoidance, and guarantees extensive safeguards for the protection of taxpayers’ rights
It serves as the premier instrument for implementing the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account information in tax matters developed by the OCED and G20 countries. The Convention will enable the United Arab Emirates to fulfil their commitment to begin the first of such exchanges by 2018.
India had signed the MAC few years back.