Letters: Still taxing

This refers to ‘The Swiss government agrees to share data on tax evasions’, June 23. The move is a positive development. Under pressure from countries like the US, Switzerland agreed to relax its prized banking secrecy in March and accepted, for the first time, to share certain bank-client data with other jurisdictions once bilateral tax treaties were ratified. Banking experts believe Switzerland is in danger of losing its status as the pre-eminent centre of global private banking as it wilts under pressure to end banking secrecy.

But tracking money in Swiss and other tax havens, and bringing it back to India, will continue to remain a formidable task. No one should think it is going to be easy for India’s tax agencies to decipher complex transactions just because the Swiss have agreed to share some data.

M M Gurbaxani, Bangalore