The list of EU tax havens lose weight again. The European Council has decided to remove four territories in its latest update, released this Tuesday: Bahamas, Belize, Seychelles and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The group of countries considered non-cooperative in tax matters is thus reduced from 16 to 12 jurisdictions: American Samoa, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Panama, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, United States Virgin Islands, Vanuatu and Russia, which was included in February 2023. The so-called countries also decrease gray list. This catalogue includes those jurisdictions that, unlike tax havens, have committed to carrying out reforms to comply with Brussels requirements.
The Council updates its list of tax havens twice a year—in February and October. The first edition was published in 2017 and included 17 countries, opaque jurisdictions, that did not have any open communication in the tax field with the EU or that had not carried out the reforms that had been required of them. Appearing on this list not only has a reputational impact, it also entails practical disadvantages for the actors operating in these places, such as greater surveillance, the impossibility of deducting expenses or receiving European funds.
The number of territories contemplated in the gray list It has also become smaller over the years. This group was made up of 47 countries in 2017, in the first version of the list. In this latest review, the Council has removed six territories – Albania, Aruba, Botswana, Dominica, Hong Kong, and Israel – and has incorporated three – the Bahamas, Belize and Seychelles. In total, there are 10 countries that the EU considers cooperative while waiting for the required improvements to materialize: Armenia, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Eswatini (Swaziland), Malaysia, Turkey and Vietnam.
For the EU to consider a territory as cooperative, it has to follow a series of tax governance criteria linked to transparency and information exchange, as well as measures against tax base erosion and corporate profit shifting — particularly those developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—. However, the European lists of tax havens have never been so ambitious as a tool against fraud, and not only because of the gradual reduction in the number of countries included in them. Another important reason is that they have never incorporated those countries from the community bloc with aggressive taxation, such as Ireland, the Netherlands or Luxembourg.
Source: West Observer (Feb 20 2024)