# Revenue's power over foreign bank accounts



## rootuid (28 Apr 2013)

Hi,
I'm wondering what powers revenue have over foreign bank accounts. 

Imagine I have a bank account in Germany and i don't declare it, can revenue see that I have a bank account and see the status of that account?

I'm guessing their powers differ outside of the EU right?


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## murphaph (29 Apr 2013)

No Revenue can't "see" it and have no idea what's in it. The German bank is not obliged to inform Revenue about any dealings wrt the account nor would they. They might inform the German Finanzamt if there's any suspicious activity associated with the account but they couldn't just pass this information on to Revenue as it would contravene German data protection laws. There'd likely need to be a court order for Revenue to ever see the contents of your German account. Of course, you shouldn't be doing anything that would give Revenue any cause for concern in the first place. You should declare anything you're obliged to declare.


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## delgirl (29 Apr 2013)

Luxemburg has agreed in April 2013 to relax it's secrecy rules and to exchange information with the rest of the EU, effective 1 January 2015.

France, the UK, Germany Italy and Spain have agreed a system whereby they will automatically exchange information with each other on foreign depositors and they have added this to the agenda of the next EU summit in May to extend to the entire EU and Switzerland by 2015.

There won't be many places to hide after that, other than outside the EU.


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## WizardDr (29 Apr 2013)

Have a look at the Overseas Regulators part of this:

Credit Union and Co-Operation with Overseas Regulators Act 2012.


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## och aye (22 Aug 2013)

Query:  Irish person buys his first house/ in ireland early 2007
moved to uk to find work late 2007
resident in Uk since then
now has a revenue audit re his irish house,trs etc
(House owner now in serious negative equity)
can revenue Demand to see his UK bank statements ?


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