Building Effective Beneficial Ownership Frameworks: A Joint Global Forum and IDB Toolkit

The availability of beneficial ownership information on legal persons and arrangements is a key requirement of tax transparency and a key instrument in the fight against tax evasion and other financial crimes. The purpose of this toolkit is to present the various approaches to ensure the availability of beneficial ownership information in line with the exchange of information standards and to present some lessons learned from the peer reviews carried out by the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes. This toolkit should provide jurisdictions with relevant inputs to carry out their own internal assessment of the most suited methods for implementation, taking into account their unique legal, policy, and operational frameworks. The toolkit is not an end in itself. The IDB and the Global Forum Secretariat are available to complement the guidance contained in the toolkit by delivering tailored assistance to jurisdictions that need help in enhancing their beneficial ownership frameworks.