Revenue to share property data internationally to prevent tax evasion 

Agreement allows Revenue to exchange information with other tax authorities on property ownership, acquisition and disposal transactions, and recurrent income derived from property

Tánaiste and finance minister Simon Harris said through this agreement 'Ireland will become an early adopter of an important tax transparency initiative which may be a foundation on which further action can be built'. 

The Irish Government has committed to an international agreement that will enable the Revenue Commissioners to share data on property ownership, as well as income derived from property, in a bid to prevent tax evasion.

The agreement, entitled the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Readily Available Information on Immovable Property (IPI MCAA), allows Revenue, as well as its counterparts in other countries, to exchange readily available information with other tax authorities on property ownership, acquisition and disposal transactions, and recurrent income derived from property.

The goal behind this agreement is to improve transparency, prevent tax evasion, ensure residents declare income and gains from foreign property, and the funds used to purchase these properties were declared and taxed appropriately.

Tánaiste and finance minister Simon Harris said through this agreement “Ireland will become an early adopter of an important tax transparency initiative which may be a foundation on which further action can be built”.

Alongside Ireland, the participating countries include Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Korea, Lithuania, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and Gibraltar.

In a joint statement from the participating countries, it said despite advances in cross-border exchanges of tax information and international cooperation between tax administrations in recent years, “there is not yet a mechanism for jurisdictions to exchange information on non-financial assets, especially immovable property”.

“Recognising that ownership and transactions involving immovable property often have cross-border elements, we acknowledge the need for improved mechanisms to ensure that tax authorities have access to relevant information on immovable property assets held and income derived therefrom abroad to enforce tax laws effectively,” the statement said.

The participating countries said they were aiming to join the IPI MCAA by 2029 or 2030 subject to domestic procedures as applicable.

The statement added the broad adoption of this policy “is an important step towards delivering tax transparency on non-financial assets”.

“It will strengthen our ability to monitor and enforce tax compliance, and to combat tax evasion, which undermines public revenues and unfairly shifts the tax burden onto compliant taxpayers,” the statement said.

In a report proposing this policy, the OECD said enhancing international tax transparency on immovable property can “equip tax administrations with information necessary to ensure compliance with tax obligations”.

In recent years, there have been a number of similar measures in other areas such as the Common Reporting Standard, which allowed the automatic exchange of information on financial assets and the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, which did the same for crypto-assets.