On 18 and 19 February of this year, the first meeting of the Steering Committee on “Availability of Public Information (DPI)” of interest for the control of tax compliance was carried out in Panama.

This first meeting of the Committee initiated the implementation phase of the CIAT’s “Public information standard”, on which we have been working since 2012, resulting in the publication in 2013 of the document entitled “Availability of Public Information of Tax Interest in Latin American Countries: State of Situation”. It describes the standard, the main characteristics of commercial databases and provides an estimate of the public information available in 10 countries in the region.

The objectives of this meeting were to define the standard of public information, the role of the Committee members, the mechanism of implementation of the standard, and validate the tool that will facilitate access to sources of public information.

The meeting included participants from the tax authorities of Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Dominican Republic and Uruguay. The “Tax Justice Network” was also present, represented by an expert on issues related to transparency and access to information.

The CIAT Executive Secretariat thanks all the present for their prominent role and especially the support provided by the GIZ of Germany since the creation of the DIP initiative, and the Secretariat of Federal Revenue of Brazil for the development of the IT tool.

Participants