The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is preparing new draft guidelines concerning income received by residents who are beneficiaries of foreign trusts.

The OECD's Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (the Global Forum) has published new reports on the compliance of Ecuador, Israel, Lithuania, Moldova, Sint Maarten and Sweden with international standards for exchange of information on request (EOIR).

All six jurisdictions are rated largely compliant. However, the Global Forum identified 'material gaps' in Israel's provision of beneficial ownership information about legal entities and arrangements such as trusts. It nonetheless acknowledged legislative advancements since the country's last peer review in 2016.

The main source of beneficial ownership information in Israel is the anti-money laundering (AML) framework, which requires banks and other financial institutions to identify the beneficial owners of their clients. New legislation comes into force on 1 October 2024, giving the Israeli tax authority powers to access customer due-diligence information from banks, including with respect to exchange of information requests received prior to 1 October 2024.