IEIM100010 | Exchange of information: Introduction

In the ever increasing multinational world of business and finance, where people, businesses, investments, and transactions frequently reach across international borders, HMRC needs to be able to obtain information from overseas to help in our compliance and other activities.

Exchange of Information with other tax authorities is an essential way of increasing tax transparency and cooperation between jurisdictions. It is a two-way process: we receive useful information for our work and, in turn, we provide other jurisdictions with information we either hold as a tax authority or can obtain with our information powers.

These exchanges are made possible by the extensive network of international bilateral and multilateral agreements the UK has signed. Our domestic legislation creates the necessary legal gateways (IEIM101200) to release information under these agreements.

The actual exchanges must be performed by trained and designated specialists called Competent Authorities (IEIM101400), but they will rely on you to explain what you want to ask for, or what you have that might help our overseas counterparts.

Any processing of personal data will be carried out under Article 6(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) HMRC Privacy Notice.
Any processing of special category data will be carried out under the Article 9 of the GDPR and Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 HMRC appropriate Policy document.

Retention of personal data will be in line with the HMRC Records Management and Retention and Disposal Policy

Any sharing of personal data outside of HMRC will follow the:

• Data Sharing guidance within the HMRC Privacy Notice

• Contracts and data sharing guidance published on the ICO website

• HMRC Information Disclosure Guide available on Gov.UK

IEIM100020 explains the purpose of this guidance and provides links to some of the key pages.