With Panama joining the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance (MCA), the country raises the number of partner jurisdictions or nations with which it can exchange information from 30 to 107.
Publio Cortés, Director General of Revenue, explained that the Convention "allows the exchange of tax information on request between signatory jurisdictions, but does not imply automatic exchange, but allows bilateral negotiations through agreements between the competent authorities to That automatic exchange be given ".
The MAC, approved by the National Assembly of Deputies in the third debate on February 14, was signed by Panama on October 27, 2016 with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The MAC is considered one of the international instruments that allow jurisdictions to strengthen their collaboration between their authorities to fight against tax evasion and loss of revenue. More than 100 jurisdictions are attached to the Convention as a multilateral agreement.
Panama's accession to the MAC is part of the government's efforts to comply with international standards in transparency and occurs after the country's commitment to the automatic exchange of financial information through the Common Reporting Standard – CRS) for which the country has already adopted a regulatory framework with Law No. 51 of 2016.
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