| The globalization of economies has increased the liberalization of capital flows,the growth of electronic commerce and the easy availability of Internet banking have significantly changed the efficiency of economic activities.Based on all these changes and the development of cross-border financial system,many transnational taxpayers escape from the supervision of tax authorities by registering shell companies in tax havens.The increase of tax evasion and avoidance leads to the erosion of tax bases,which deprives governments of revenues.To curb tax evasion and avoidance,countries and international organizations reinforce the international administration cooperation and improve national tax transparency through the exchange of tax information,which helps to reorganize the tax evasion of transnational taxpayers into the scope of supervision of tax authorities in various countries.The form of information exchanging has constantly enriched and improved with the implementation of tax information exchange among countries.The range,content and quantity are enlarged from exchanging on request and spontaneously to exchanging automatically.Exchanging tax information automatically has become the focus of international tax administration cooperation and the new direction of information exchange with the promotion of the OECD and the G20 and the cooperation of other countries.However,this has caused some concerns since the lack of protection of taxpayers' rights in the current information exchange system that leads to the seriously unequal status between taxpayers and tax authorities.There is no clear,systematic taxpayer rights protection system even in the most experienced OECD countries.The relationship between the tax authorities and taxpayers is getting tenser under the automatic exchange of information(AEOI)since tax authorities are legally collecting large quantities of taxpayers' sensitive financial information.Therefore,the taxpayer rights protection system in AEOI needs to be further improved.Firstly,confidentiality should be maintained so that taxpayers would be glad to give the relevant tax information to the tax authorities.Secondly,the participation right of taxpayers should be protected by countries.Lastly,the protection of the right of relief of taxpayers as the most effective way needs to be clear in domestic laws.These are the basic rights of taxpayers in the process of automatic information exchanging and the most important and heated kinds of taxpayers' rights.The protection of taxpayers' rights would rely on the stipulations in domestic laws since the provisions in international tax laws are usually principled and the domestic laws can provide taxpayers with the most directive and convenient procedure.After sorting out and studying the stipulations related to the protection of taxpayers in China and comparing to the relevant agreements,treaties and theories in current international tax laws,there are many problems in the current taxpayer protection system in China,mainly in the imperfection of confidentiality,the lack of taxpayer participation system and the incompleteness in the protection of taxpayer's right of relief.The solutions of these problems could be divided into two aspects of substantive law and procedural law considering the reality and operability of these measures and the experiences in other countries.Specifically speaking,developing specialized legal regulations or modifying existing regulations,increasing and refining the provisions of punishments of tax information disclosure,and perfecting the stipulations of taxpayer's right to participate and the right to relief could be taken in substantive law.Besides,establishing information disclosure reporting system,perfecting the accountability mechanism of information disclosure,implementing the supervision system of information collection and introducing international tax arbitration system should be done in procedural law to promote the taxpayers' rights protection in AEOI. |
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