Swiss strike tax deal with UK

ZURICH (Reuters) - Switzerland and Britain have agreed on a new double taxation treaty, bringing the Alpine country within sight of the required number of treaties to get off an OECD list of tax havens.

Switzerland, whose private banks manage around $2 trillion (1.2 trillion pounds) of foreign wealth, aims to secure 12 new bilateral tax deals by the end of 2009 which could allow it to be removed from an OECD "grey list" of states which need to improve tax cooperation.

Britain is the tenth country with which it has initialled an agreement including the extended assistance clause in tax matters after Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, France, Mexico, the USA, Japan, the Netherlands and Poland, the Swiss finance ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The agreement would only be published once it was signed at a ministerial level and would only come into force once parliament has approved it.

However, the Swiss government also wants the first of these double taxation agreements to include the OECD rules to be subject to a referendum.

Fearing sanctions from the G20, Switzerland and other tax havens agreed in March to relax prized bank secrecy and accepted for the first time to share certain bank client data with other jurisdictions once bilateral tax treaties are ratified.

(Reporting by Sven Egenter)