The Commission will continue to strongly promote the automatic exchange of information as the future European and international standard of transparency and exchange of information in tax matters.
It is also essential that the EU IT tools developed by the Commission with the Member States are promoted in international fora[20] and in particular in the OECD to ensure widespread application of such tools and to avoid duplication. Member States should be able to use a single set of tools and instruments both within the EU and in their relations with third countries.
To this end, the Commission is working closely with the OECD on the on-going development of IT formats to be used for the automatic exchange of information under Directive 2011/16/EU on administrative cooperation in the field of taxation[21]. The objective is to take into account, from the beginning, the suggestions of non EU countries with a view to having the IT formats fully endorsed and applied outside the EU.
Moreover, the Commission will ask the OECD to endorse its recently developed e-Forms for exchange of information on request, spontaneous exchange of information and feedback in the field of direct taxation, and will continue its cooperation with the OECD with regard to the e-Forms developed in the context of the recovery of claims.
