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Jersey May Go For Independence From The UK

Jason Gorringe, Tax-news.com, London

03 July 2000

Senator Paul Le Claire will ask the States of Jersey to set a referendum next May to decide on full independence from the UK.

Le Claire is just one of a large number of senior Jersey figures who feel that the the UK's push for world-wide information-exchange standards is calculated to destroy the island's business, and that protestations of loyalty from London are just so much cynical hot air.

It may or may not be true that London is deliberately trying to cut down the UK's offshore dependent territories as part of a drive to increase tax collection; what cannot be denied is that Gordon Brown has opened Pandora's box, and nothing now stands between the likes of Jersey and the assembled might of the rich world's finance ministers other than the suspect support of the British Government.

The Jersey authorities feel powerless: in a private letter to the OECD last November, Jersey's chief executive
explained just why Jersey's tax regime in no way fits the OECD's definition of a tax haven. Its income tax rate is 20%, it has higher corporation tax rates than Ireland (a full member of the EU) and its financial services are responsibly regulated. But all this, as the island authorities recently complained in a further
letter, the OECD simply ignores.

The island also cannot but notice that the British Government, supposedly so supportive, provides the Chair of the EU's 'Code of Conduct' Committee on Unfair Tax Practices, in the person of Dawn Primarolo, Paymaster-General.

Senator Le Claire doesn't mince his words: 'The British Government had better prepare itself for 90,000 fewer allies, with £90bn in their care'.

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