Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) (Amendment of Schedule) Order, 2014

Summary

This Order amends the Schedule to the Mutual Legal Assistance (Tax Matters) (No.2) Order, 2010, which contains the tax information exchange agreement between the Government of the British Virgin Islands and the Government of the United Kingdom. It inserts two new Articles into that agreement to expand the mechanisms by which the two governments' competent authorities can share tax information.

• Article 5A - Automatic Exchange: Allows the competent authorities of the BVI and UK to automatically transmit information to each other for the purposes of the Agreement, with the specific items and procedures to be determined by mutual agreement between the Parties.
• Article 5B - Spontaneous Exchange: Allows a competent authority to spontaneously transmit information to the other Party's competent authority where it considers the information foreseeably relevant to the purposes of the Agreement.
• Entry into force: The new arrangement takes effect once each Party has notified the other of completion of its domestic procedures, and applies to information exchanged on or after that date regardless of the taxable period concerned.

This is a government-level treaty amendment rather than a rule directly imposing new compliance duties on private financial institutions; it operationalises automatic and spontaneous information exchange under the existing BVI-UK tax information exchange agreement.

Key obligations

• The competent authorities of the BVI and UK must notify each other upon completion of the domestic procedures required to bring the new Articles 5A and 5B into force.

Deadlines

• on the date of the later of the notifications between the competent authorities: Entry into force of the new automatic and spontaneous information exchange provisions (Articles 5A and 5B) under the BVI-UK tax information exchange agreement