The Global Forum for Transparency and Information Exchange for Tax Purposes brings together jurisdictions, both OECD members and non-members, that have made a commitment to transparency and information exchange and worked jointly to develop international standards for transparency and information exchange in tax matters.

El Salvador became a member of the Global Forum for Transparency and Information Exchange for Tax Purposes in 2011. In the peer review process, the country's Ministry of Finance had the support of the EUROsociAL II Programme in both Phase 1 and Phase 2.

During Phase 1, technical assistance was provided in November 2014 to the Directorate-General of Internal Revenue (DGII) aimed at helping Salvadoran authorities understand the results of the Phase 1 evaluation and helping to prepare the technical team responsible for representing El Salvador before the Peer Review Group (PRG) held in Paris in February 2015. The support provided by EUROsociAL represented an important step since, as a result of this evaluation, El Salvador moved to the next stage (Phase 2) of the review process, which will evaluate information exchange at a practical level.

Later, with a view to Phase 2, there was an exchange visit in July 2015 by a team of employees of El Salvador's DGII to the National Fraud Investigation Office of Spain's AEAT in order to learn about best practices applied by Spain with respect to Tax Information Exchange Agreements.

Lastly, on 23rd and 24th November, an expert advisory mission was carried out to San Salvador with several objectives. On the one hand, to analyse in detail and make recommendations regarding El Salvador's draft report from Phase 2 of the evaluation of the Peer Review Group; on the other, to explain the main modifications to the references terms to be used in the next round of evaluations and the general concepts of information exchange, legal instruments, and confidentiality; lastly, to analyse the main practical aspects of information exchange.

The advisory mission was led by the AEAT expert who is the Spanish representative of this institution in the Peer Review Group of the Global Forum. This made it possible to advise the Salvadoran representatives more precisely and concretely, thanks to her knowledge of both the functioning of the Group and of the international standard for transparency and information exchange, in other words, the reference terms, methodology, and rating criteria used to conduct the evaluation in Phase 2.

The advisory mission was held after the visit of the Global Forum Peer Review Group evaluator, and before discussion and subsequent approval of the El Salvador's Phase 2 Report within the framework of the Peer Review Group, which will take place in February 2016, at which time the Global Forum for Transparency and Information Exchange for Tax Purposes is expected to approve a favourable report of Phase 2.

This activity is part of the "Voluntary Compliance with Tax Obligations" action of the EUROsociAL Programme, financed by the European Union and coordinated by the FIIAPP, in which the AEAT and the Inter-American Centre for Tax Administrations (CIAT) are acting as operational partners.