Fostering Tax Transparency in Albania . Support to the Automatic Exchange of Information Pilot Program f

The general objective of the program is to support Albania's compliance with its commitment to start automatic exchange of information on financial accounts for tax purposes (the common reporting standard', abbr. CRS) by September 2018. This project (hereafter referred to as the Pilot Project) is part of a wider action launched late 2014 by the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information (abbr. GF) finalised to assist countries to implement the new CRS. Several Pilot Projects have been undertaken between 2015 and 2016 as a collaborative effort between the Pilot country and a developed country that has agreed to partner with the Pilot country, the Global Forum Secretariat, the World Bank Group and other organisations where relevant. Albania is among the Countries which responded to the open invitation made by the GF with the aim to reach full implementation in accordance with the CRS. Given the Italian Revenue Agency longstanding experience in the AEOI field, the Ministry engaged Agenzia delle Entrate to assist Albania in the CRS implementation process. At this regard, Italian Minister Pier Carlo Padoan on 29/10/2014 made a public statement regarding Italian commitment as Partner Country to the Pilot Project with Albania. In this context, Italy took the challenge to support the necessary steps for the uptake of the new standard. It was thus agreed that Italy, the Global Forum Secretariat and World Bank Group would partner with Albania to reach this commitment, by undertaking a Pilot Project. As the project will be mainly based on a peer to peer knowledge transfer to support Albania to implement and benefit from AEOI in a timely manner, Italian contribution will consist mainly in transferring its longstanding experience in this field and will benefit from the recent implementation of the automatic exchange of information according to the bilateral Agreement with USA putting in place the 2009 US foreign account tax compliance Act (abbr. FATCA), from which CRS originates, and from the implementation of the CRS itself, as Italy committed to make the first exchange under CRS by September 2017. Italian contribution to the Pilot Project would be in the form of supporting technical and ruling implementation of CRS, consulting and training Albanian tax officials (classes and on.the.job) so to allow Albanian Government to make the first automatic exchange of information according to the CRS by the end of September 2018. The specific goal of this Pilot Project is giving advice to Albania to develop the four critical components of CRS: (i) a legal basis for exchange (ii) rules that require financial institutions to report information and follow due diligence procedures consistent with the Standard (iii) administrative and IT infrastructure to collect and exchange information under the Standard and (iv) confidentiality and data safeguards