Seychelles making steady progress to achieve OECD standard |27 June 2015

The Ministry of Finance, Trade and the Blue Economy remains committed and on track towards complying with the widely-recognised Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s regulations on the sharing of tax information.

Minister Jean-Paul Adam said this in a press communiqué issued by his ministry.

“Seychelles is making considerable and steady progress in achieving the OECD standard in relation to the exchange of tax information,” said Minister Adam.

Minister Adam was making reference to the recent list of 30 jurisdictions considered as uncooperative in tax information-sharing by European Union countries. Seychelles forms part of the list.

Speaking to the media yesterday afternoon, Minister Adam said the list made public by the European Union is the Union’s perception vis-à-vis those countries some it considers as tax havens.

The other countries on the list are Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Brunei, Cook Islands, Grenada, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nauru, Niue, Panama, St Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos, US Virgin Islands, and Vanuatu.

According to Agence France Presse, EU economic affairs commissioner, Pierre Moscovici, described the publication of the list as a "decisive step" that would "push non-cooperative non-EU jurisdictions to be more cooperative and adopt international standards”.

Critics of the EU list, which includes both affected countries and tax information-sharing experts and campaign groups, say the list seems to punish smaller jurisdictions, which have often shown themselves to be making bona fide efforts to improve their tax information-sharing regulations and has left some of the biggest tax offenders off the list entirely.
Minister Adam said the EU and any countries that have concerns “should align themselves to the OECD process”, which he pointed out is the only multilateral process currently working on issues of tax transparency.

He added he believes that most of the 11 EU member states which had listed Seychelles as non-compliant, which included Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece and Estonia, were doing so “on the basis of inaccurate and outdated information”.

The minister added that Seychelles would now take the matter up with both the EU and the individual member countries concerned.

In 2013, the OECD rated Seychelles as non-compliant in two areas in the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes, during phase two of the Peer Review Group rating process, raising concerns regarding the Seychelles jurisdiction’s tax transparency rules.

However in October 2013, government officials stated that decisive action would be taken to address the Peer Review Group’s concerns and push for a re-assessment.

The ministry has said the OECD’s Peer Review Group recently issued the launch of Seychelles' supplementary report on tax transparency, which will now be considered by the Global Forum later this year.