Caribbean Territories White-Listed

by Amanda Banks, Tax-News.com, London

26 March 2010

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has welcomed a late drive by three Caribbean territories to conclude multiple tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) to gain a place on the list of territories that have substantially-implemented the internationally-agreed standard in transparency and tax information exchange.

The recent signings bring the total number of TIEAs concluded by the territories to at least twelve. Accordingly, the three territories have become the 23rd, 24th and 25th jurisdictions to be placed on the OECD 'white list’ of compliant territories.

In order to gain their respective places on the white list, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines on March 24 signed tax information exchange agreements with the Nordic group, which includes the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

These agreements add to agreements St. Kitts and Nevis had already signed with Australia, Monaco, the Netherlands, the Netherland Antilles, Aruba, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Belgium, New Zealand and Liechtenstein, bringing their total to 16 agreements. St. Vincent and the Grenadines has also now signed 16 agreements that meet the standard, including its existing agreements with Australia, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Aruba, Liechtenstein, Belgium, Ireland, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

Anguilla, which signed an agreement with Australia and Germany on March 19, had previously signed 11 other agreements – including agreements with the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the seven Nordic economies – and this signing brings their total to 13 agreements that meet the internationally agreed tax standard.

Jeffrey Owens, Director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, said: "We continue to see a great deal of progress as jurisdictions move to sign agreements. With Anguilla, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines now reaching this benchmark, almost all of the Caribbean jurisdictions have substantially implemented the standard, and we will be working with the remaining jurisdictions – both in the Caribbean and elsewhere – to encourage them to follow this trend and provide whatever assistance we can."

"The real test will come with the peer review process, when the Global Forum can evaluate the quality of these agreements and the extent of the implementation of the standards in practice."

Since the launch of the OECD initiative on tax information exchange in April 2009 by G20 governments, almost 370 TIEAs have been signed or existing agreements revised to incorporate international transparency standards.

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