The vote was 24 to 15, and came on Wednesday after more than 20 hours of debate, according to press reports.
The other chamber of Switzerland’s Parliament is due to discuss the matter next week.
The dispute between the US Justice Department and Switzerland’s banks dates back to 2009, when Switzerland’s biggest bank, UBS, admitted to criminal wrong-doing by helping Americans to evade US taxes, and agreed to turn over more than 4,450 client names and pay a $780m fine.
The draft bill approved by the Swiss Senate would relax the country’s famously impregnable bank secrecy laws in order to allow the country’s banks to accommodate US requests for information in connection with its tax evasion investigations.
As reported, the proposed legislation – known as the Federal Act on Measures to Facilitate the Resolution of the Tax Dispute between Swiss Banks and the United States – was finalised last month.
As written, it would provide for a one-year window during which the requested data could be transferred, according to Swiss finance minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, who called it the best way to “restore stability” to Switzerland’s financial sector.
Client names and account deals will continue to be withheld by banks, under the agreement, but other data said to be key to tracking US tax evaders with undeclared Swiss accounts would be permitted to be exchanged.
Switzerland’s lawmakers are said to be seeking to deal with the matter during the current parliamentary session, because it is felt, as a statement on the website of the Swiss Confederation put it on 29 May, that the United States is "unprepared to wait any longer".
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