India to press for automatic exchange of non-financial assets' info at G20

India is pressing for expanding the scope of common reporting standard (CRS) at the G20 to include non-financial assets, like real estate properties, under the automatic exchange of information (AEOI) among OECD countries, Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra said on Thursday.

Presently, the OECD's Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) framework provides for sharing of financial account details among signatory countries with an aim to check tax evasion. In August 2022, the OECD also approved the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) which provides for the reporting of tax information on transactions in crypto assets in a standardised manner, with a view to automatically exchanging such information.

Addressing the meeting of the 'Asia Initiative of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes', Malhotra said there is also a need to broaden the scope of AEOI so that the information could be used not only to check tax evasion, but also for other non-tax law enforcing purposes.

Under the AEOI framework, signatory countries follow a CRS and obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis.

"We would also like expansion of the CRS from financial to new other non-financial accounts and assets, because the risks are not only in financial assets... there is a risk of tax evasion in non-financial and real assets, properties etc," Malhotra said.

Observing that the crypto asset framework of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a significant development to counter emerging risks, he said the non-financial assets reporting framework should also be developed.

"We would also like to broaden the scope of these information. We can start exchanging financial and non-financial information not only for tax, but also for non-tax law enforcing purposes. These will be our priorities as part of the G20," he said.

Flow of information has helped us in increasing tax collection, Malhotra said.

India currently has AEOI with 108 jurisdictions for receiving financial information and with 79 jurisdictions for sending information automatically.