The latest batch of signatories to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's so-called Common Reporting Standard or 'Global FATCA' contains a surprise: Panama.

The five jurisdictions bring the total up to 101 countries and territories that have promised (the word the OECD uses is 'committed') to share people's tax information, beginning in all of these cases in September 2018. Other countries are beginning a year earlier.

OECD secretary-general Angel Gurría (pictured) has called the slide towards near-universal membership 'inevitable,' with the obvious and ironic exception of the United States, the nation that first embarked on international coercion to encourage the automatic sharing of account information between nations. The CRS promises to involve a great deal more information that that demanded under the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act 2010 (FATCA). US officials have only just admitted that the US receives FATCA-related information from various countries but has not started giving them theirs in return, and indeed they are claiming that they cannot co-operate without new legislation - an admission that they signed all inter-governmental agreements with their fingers crossed behind their backs, in the full knowledge that they would not be reciprocating at the right time or (if the legislation does not go through) at all. This, however, is nothing less than what the world expects from the US Government.

According to the website of Mossack Fonseca, the scandal-struck Panamanian law firm, in February Panama finally decided that it could not avoid some kind of reciprocal information-sharing agreement and plumped to stay out of the CRS, preparing instead to go ahead with its own FATCA. Not being a great power, Panama was asking permission to pass this law from the great economic powers of the world in the shape of the 'G20' group of 19 most industrialised nations. Mossack Fonseca wrote: "Panama has asked the Group of 20 states to acknowledge its right to develop its own model for the automatic exchange of information ― without involving adverse actions ― based on the sovereign right of each country to adopt a position relative to its unique situation ― even if such position is not the same as that of the majority of the jurisdictions. The request...occurred prior to...February 26-27.

"According the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Panama is proposing to develop its own, unique model of information exchange. This model will be based on the condition of reciprocity, protection of the basic guarantees for users of the Panamanian platform of services, mutually beneficial tax agreements, and the existence of a legal framework protecting confidentiality and assuring that the information is used in a proper manner ― similar to the FATCA programme instituted by the United States.

"International organizations such as the G20 and the OECD have put pressure on Panama to sign a multilateral exchange of information agreement. To date, over 90 countries have committed to exchanging information with each other, but, at the same time, several have not agreed to multilateral, unrestricted exchanges."

Though information in English is scant from the Isthmus, it is possible that Panama may still go ahead with its own version of FATCA, as indeed the United Kingdom has done with CDOT, otherwise known as 'UK FATCA,' an agreement is has signed with its colonies. It seems likely from the timing of this announcement that the revelations from the Panama Papers - themselves possibly the result of computer hacking on the part of the US Government - provided the final straw that broke the back of Panamanian resistance to the CRS.