(Bloomberg) -- Switzerland and the US have tightened the automatic exchange of bank information, making it harder for American citizens to keep their account data from getting into the hands of US tax authorities. 

US clients in Switzerland lose the possibility to withhold their consent to have their data shared with US authorities from 2027, the Swiss Finance Ministry said in a statement on Thursday announcing the agreement. 

The previous arrangement forced US authorities to request this data through an administrative process if a client didn’t consent to the exchange. The new deal now puts the onus on the US clients instead, who must prove that the rules don’t apply to them to get an exemption, a spokesperson for the finance ministry told Bloomberg. 

The change further erodes the ability of US citizens to use Swiss banks as a way to store their money out of the reach of US tax authorities. That was already deeply cut more than a decade ago when Switzerland’s banks struck deals with the US, known as deferred prosecution agreements, that saw them pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines and pledge their ongoing cooperation in return for being spared a criminal prosecution. 

Click here for a chart on how much each Swiss bank paid

UBS Group AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, alone paid $780 million in 2009 and turned over the details of thousands of client accounts in exchange. Five years later, the now defunct Credit Suisse agreed to pay $2.6 billion in penalties and pleaded guilty to helping Americans cheat on their taxes. 

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