Business Exchange Buzz up! Digg Print Email The U.S. tax system complies with most international standards for transparency and information exchange with other governments, a review by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found.

The report, released today at a conference in Bermuda, examined the availability of company ownership information, accounting records and banking records, along with the government’s cooperation with tax authorities around the world.

“The U.S. tax system imposes a wide range of substantive tax and information-reporting obligations,” said the report, released by the 101-member Global Forum on Transparency of Information for Tax Purposes. “Persons seeking to obscure their affairs for tax or other reasons wouldn’t generally be eager to expose themselves to the authority of the Internal Revenue Service.”

OECD peer reviewers raised two concerns about the U.S. tax system. The study recommends that the U.S. improve disclosure of ownership and accounting information of single-member limited liability companies. It also suggests that the government respond more quickly to other countries’ requests.

The OECD also released reports today on France, the Isle of Man, Italy, New Zealand, Hungary, the Philippines, Singapore and Switzerland. Each report contained recommendations for improvement. The report on Switzerland said that the country, known for its bank secrecy, has “changed significantly’’ in the past two years in its approach to information-sharing and is trying to comply with international standards.

Offshore Tax Evasion

The OECD’s report was released as the U.S. government is taking steps to seek out offshore tax evasion and work with other governments. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing June 7 on tax treaties with Switzerland, Luxembourg and Hungary.

Also, the IRS is implementing a 2010 law that requires non- U.S. banks to disclose information about U.S. account holders. The IRS also has proposed rules that would require domestic banks to report information about their non-U.S. account holders.

Treasury Department spokeswoman Sandra Salstrom declined to comment on the report.

The recommendations in the report on the U.S. focused on single-member limited liability companies, or LLCs, that could be used as shell corporations, potentially to evade non-U.S. taxing authorities. Such companies with no U.S. business or income wouldn’t be required to file federal tax returns.

‘Serious Deficiency’

During a news conference today after the release of the report, Pascal Saint-Amans, head of the Global Forum secretariat, called the LLC issue a “serious deficiency.”

“The Global Forum has considered that the issue was serious enough to be identified as needing a recommendation as needing to be fixed,” he said, adding that the U.S. has acknowledged the issue. “So there is a very clear-cut recommendation there.”

The report notes that Delaware has the largest number of LLCs of any state, and that the representatives of LLCs based there aren’t required to know who owns them. The report cites recent “affirmative steps to curb the opportunities for abuse by single-member LLCs exploiting the inaccessibility of ownership information.”

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, has called for the U.S. to require more disclosure of the owners of LLCs. When President Barack Obama was a senator from Illinois, he cosponsored a bill with Levin in 2008 that would have required states to collect and keep more information on the beneficial owners of LLCs.