Luxembourg has signed an agreement for the exchange of bank information on request in all tax matters with the U.S., marking a major step forward in international efforts to counter tax evasion. This is the first agreement by Luxembourg with an OECD country which meets the OECD standard for information exchange.

In an announcement, the two countries said that they have modified an existing bilateral tax treaty dating from 1996 by adding a protocol that updates the information exchange provision of Article 28 of the treaty in accordance with the exchange of information standard of the OECD Model Tax Convention.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría welcomed the new Luxembourg-U.S. agreement:

“ We have seen many endorsements of the OECD standards over the past two months and it is very encouraging to see how quickly countries are now moving to implement them ,” he said.