(the star): A cross-party committee of British legislators has called on the government to introduce U.S.-style automatic disclosure of information on UK citizens by foreign institutions and tax authorities to help stem global cross-border tax evasion. In a report published on Thursday, the International Development Committee said that if tax authorities are required to share information on UK individual taxpayers or corporations, it would help stop international tax evasion. The proposed legislation takes as inspiration the new US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which is designed to stop Americans from hiding money from the taxman offshore, the report says. FATCA places the burden of automatic disclosure to US tax authorities on foreign financial institutions, with US taxpayers as clients.

In Europe, under the EU's Savings Directive, if an EU resident holds an account in another member state, the home tax authorities must be notified.

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