Bahamian Official Vows To Rebut International Tax Pressure

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

10 December 2001

Speaking at the annual Caribbean Latin American Action Conference in Miami last week, Zhivargo Laing, Minister of Economic Development for the Bahamas vowed to resist unfair tax pressure from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

'We have a simple position: The like must be treated alike and the equal treated equally,' he explained on Wednesday. 'It has to be a matter of all countries being required to adjust as opposed to just one jurisdiction and that jurisdiction being the Bahamas.'

Mr Laing defended the efforts made by the Caribbean jurisdiction in the fight against money laundering, pointing to the fact that the Bahamas was recently removed from the FATF blacklist as evidence of the progress made. However, he defended the country's low tax regime, and revealed that in the face of the OECD's tax demands: 'The Bahamas has largely not responded,' adding 'We were not prepared to erode any advantages we have. '

International efforts to force offshore jurisdictions to reform their taxation policies are seen by many of the smaller financial centres as an attack on their sovereignty, and were the hot topic of conversation at last week's conference, with reactions ranging from fear to anger.

However, it was the OECD's harshest critic who received the loudest applause on Wednesday, according to a report in the Miami Herald. Dan Mitchell, a delegate from the Heritage Foundation in Washington summed up the prevailing mood: 'They [the OECD] just want to turn low tax jurisdictions into fiscal colonies to support their uncompetitive welfare states,' he observed.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/local/sfl-zfinance06dec06.story?coll=sfla%2Dbusiness%2Dheadlines http://www.miami.com/herald/content/business/national/digdocs/077578.htm

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