Facts
The Federal Supreme Court decided that the Federal Tax Administration (FTA) must provide administrative assistance to the Direction Générale des Finances Publiques (DGFP) in France to transmit information about persons with accounts at UBS Switzerland AG.
The administrative assistance request from the DGFP dated May 11, 2016 concerned a list of around 40,000 account and bank numbers with which the affected persons could be identified. The FTA and UBS Switzerland AG had initially refused to transmit the information, as they had doubts about France's compliance with the duty of confidentiality and the principle of specialty.
The Federal Supreme Court concluded that this was a "list request" in which the affected persons could be individually identified based on the known bank numbers. For such list requests, administrative assistance must be provided from January 1, 2010, even if the affected persons are not named individually.
Furthermore, the request met the requirements of the foreseeable relevance and did not constitute an inadmissible "fishing expedition". The concerns raised by UBS Switzerland AG regarding a possible breach of the duty of confidentiality and the principle of specialty had been dispelled by the assurances provided by France.
Considerations
The Federal Supreme Court concluded that the FTA must transmit the requested information to the DGFP. It overturned the judgments of the lower instance and confirmed the FTA's order to disclose as well as its final decisions.
The court stated that the provisions on administrative assistance in double taxation agreements such…