Italian and Swiss Voluntary Disclosure Policies: A Critical Comparative Analysis

Abstract

The fight against offshore evasion is increasingly becoming a global current topic of fair taxation, specially following the international agreements on automatic exchange of information in tax matters entering into force in the near future. In particular, how to design a voluntary disclosure programme, complementing and reinforcing one’s own tax compliance strategy, represents one of the main issues being discussed today into the international tax environment.

A growing number of internal legislators have been drafting their own rules on voluntary disclosure, trying to find a meeting point between the need to provide sufficient incentives for non-compliant taxpayers to come forward and the will not to reward a non-compliant conduct.

The following article compares the key features of two targeted strategies, different from each other, adopted into the Italian and Swiss legislations and highlights the reasons behind both approaches, trying also to deliver new arguments on eventual inferences in the short term arising from the end of the era of banking secrecy.

Keywords: voluntary disclosure, Italian, Swiss, comparison, tax compliance

JEL Classification: K34