EU Removes Bahamas, Saint Kitts From Tax Blacklist

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

04 June 2018

The EU on May 25 removed the Bahamas and Saint Kitts and Nevis from its list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions.

The European Council said that the two jurisdictions have made commitments at a high political level to remedy the EU's concerns. The jurisdictions have been moved from annex I of the list to annex II, a so-called grey list of jurisdictions that have committed to reforming their tax systems and are subject to close monitoring.

Vladislav Goranov, Minister for Finance of Bulgaria, which holds the Council presidency, said: "Having fewer jurisdictions on the list is a measure of the success of the listing process. As jurisdictions around the world work to reform their tax policies, our challenge for the rest of the year will be to see that their commitments have been correctly implemented."

The original list, announced on December 5, 2017, contained 17 jurisdictions. When it first published the list, the Council agreed to put on hold a screening of the tax systems of the Caribbean jurisdictions that were affected in September 2017. This process was restarted in January 2018 and in March the Council added to the list the Bahamas, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the US Virgin Islands.

As of May 25, the following jurisdictions were included on the blacklist: American Samoa, Guam, Namibia, Palau, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, and the US Virgin Islands.

The "grey list" now covers Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Macao, the Marshall Islands, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, South Korea, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.

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