OECD Commends Signing Of IOM-Germany Tax Cooperation Agreements

by Robert Lee, Tax-News.com, London

04 March 2009

The Isle of Man government took an important step on March 2, 2009 in its programme of developing closer economic and taxation co-operation with other countries by concluding agreements with Germany.

The signing ceremony took place in Berlin between Allan Bell, the Isle of Man’s Treasury Minister, and for Germany Nicolette Kressl, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Finance Ministry (Deputy Minister of Finance) and Georg Witschel, Director in the Foreign Affairs Department.

The two agreements are:

• a tax information exchange agreement based on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) model; and
• an agreement for the avoidance of double taxation with respect to enterprises operating ships in international traffic.

The Isle of Man now has tax co-operation agreements in place with 13 countries, 11 of which are members of the OECD.

Commending the signing of the agreement by the IOM, Jeffrey Owens, Director of OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, welcomed the development as a further step in efforts to bring greater transparency and fairness to cross-border financial transactions. “The time has now come,” he noted, “for all jurisdictions that have made commitments to the international standards of transparency and exchange of information to follow the Isle of Man’s lead in implementing them.”

Since the start of 2007, jurisdictions committed to the OECD principles of transparency and exchange of information have signed a total of 36 bilateral information exchange agreements with OECD countries, and the Isle of Man has accounted for 11 of these. “I am particularly pleased with the excellent progress the Isle of Man has made in extending its network of these agreements,” Mr. Owens said.

OECD's work on transparency and information exchange is designed to enable countries to fully and fairly enforce their tax laws in an increasingly borderless world, noted OECD’s statement. A total of 35 jurisdictions have committed to work with OECD countries under the auspices of the OECD's Global Forum on Taxation to improve transparency and to establish effective information exchange for tax purposes, and many other countries and international organisations have also endorsed these principles, concluded the OECD’s statement.

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