Ten Global Principles for Fighting Tax Crime

​The Recommendation on the Ten Global Principles for Fighting Tax Crime (hereafter the “Recommendation”) was adopted by the OECD Council meeting at Ministerial level on 10 June 2022 on the proposal of the Committee on Fiscal Affairs (CFA). The Recommendation aims to provide guidance to assist Members and non-Members having adhered to it (hereafter the “Adherents”) in devising or updating their national strategies for addressing tax crime, by using the Ten Global Principles for Fighting Tax Crimes embodied in the Recommendation.

OECD’s work on fighting tax crimes and the need for a Recommendation

The CFA, through its Task Force on Tax Crimes and Other Crimes (TFTC), has been working on fighting tax crimes for a decade. The Ten Global Principles, approved by the CFA in November 2017 and revised in June 2021, offer the first comprehensive standard to fighting tax crimes. They provide ten essential principles to efficiently and effectively prevent, detect, investigate, and prosecute tax crimes, and to recover the proceeds of those crimes. Since 2017, the Ten Global Principles have become a core element of the OECD’s work on tax crime, which centres on the OECD Oslo Dialogue’s three pillars for fighting illicit financial flows: (i) standard-setting; (ii) capacity building; and (iii) evaluation and impact measurement.

The CFA updated the Ten Global Principles in 2021 to explore in detail new challenges, such as tackling professionals who enable tax and white-collar crimes, and fostering international co-operation in the recovery of assets.

Drawing on the knowledge and experience of government agencies around the world with the work on the Ten Global Principles and supplemented with successful case studies and best practices, the CFA agreed in 2022 to embody the updated Ten Global Principles into an OECD Recommendation to strengthen the OECD’s role in global standard-setting and capacity building in the area of tax crimes and illicit financial flows. This is an area where international co-operation and collaboration is particularly important given the borderless nature of tax crimes, and the growing cross-border risks posed by the misuse of new technologies, such as virtual assets and cyber-attacks.

Process for developing the Recommendation

The TFTC discussed the proposal to embody the Ten Global Principles into an OECD Recommendation at its November 2021 session and circulated the Recommendation for comments. The CFA approved the Recommendation and its transmission to Council for adoption on 11 February 2022.

Scope of the Recommendation

The Recommendation embodies the Ten Global Principles. As such, it recommends that Adherents criminalise violations of tax laws, make available appropriate sanctions that apply in practice; devise a strategy for addressing tax crimes; and provide tax crime enforcement authorities with adequate powers to detect, investigate, and prosecute tax crimes and related financial crimes, and to recover assets linked to these crimes.

The Recommendation further recommends to put in place an organisational structure with clear and defined responsibilities with adequate resourcing as well as effective frameworks for domestic and international co-operation. It encourages to make tax crimes a predicate offence for money laundering, and recommends to ensure that the rights of persons subject to criminal tax investigations are protected.

Next steps

The Recommendation instructs the CFA, through the TFTC, to (i) continue serving as a forum for exchanging information, experiences, and multi-stakeholder and interdisciplinary dialogue, (ii) continue collecting and mapping data received from jurisdictions, (iii) continue capacity building, (iv) report to the Council in 2027 on the implementation, dissemination, and continued relevance of the Recommendation.

To disseminate the Recommendation, the Secretariat will share it through its communication tools, stakeholders and networks, and promote it via events and activities, for example, meetings and seminars held by the TFTC and through the OECD International Academy for Tax Crime Investigation.

The Recommendation is open to non-Member adherence, renforcing the Ten Global Principles as a global standard. Several non-Members already self-assessed their domestic frameworks or expressed interest in doing so in the future.

For further information please consult: https://www.oecd.org/tax/crime/.
Contact information: OECD.TaxandCrime@oecd.org.​

Related document(s)

• Practical Guide on the Implementation of the OECD Recommendation on the Ten Global Principles for Fighting Tax Crime
• ​Tax Crime Investigation Maturity Model​
  

Source : OECD, legal instruments, juni 2022