Austrian parliament passes law to ease bank secrecy

(VIENNA) - Austria's parliament approved on Tuesday a law to ease banking secrecy in the last European Union country on the OECD "gray list" of tax havens.

With the new law passed, by a two-thirds majority, Austria will be able to get off the OECD's gray list, Finance Minister Josef Proell said.

The ruling coalition conservatives and Social Democrats along with the opposition Greens all voted for the law which provides for new Double Taxation Agreements and international administrative cooperation in tax matters.

In an international crackdown on tax havens, leaders from the Group of 20 countries at an April summit in London endorsed a three-tier list categorising tax havens and financial centres by their degree of cooperation.

Some 38 countries, including Austria, were placed in the middle tier of nations that had adopted OECD standards on exchanging tax information but not yet "substantially" implemented them.

On Monday, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said all its 30 members now followed its rules on sharing information for tax purposes after Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland accepted them.

"What has happened is nothing less than a revolution," OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria said in a statement.

"For decades it has been possible for taxpayers to hide income and assets from the taxman by abusing bank secrecy and other impediments to information exchange," Gurria said.

"What these developments show is that this will no longer be possible."