EU removes eight countries for non-cooperative tax jurisdictions |12 April 2018
The European Union removed eight countries from its list of 17 non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, in January this year, following commitments made at a high political level to remedy EU concerns.
In March this year, Bahrain, Marshall Islands and St Lucia were also lifted from the list by finance ministers after they commit to address the EU’s concerns.
A communiqué from the Ministry of Finance, Trade and Economic Planning states that the 11 countries will now be added to the 51 countries as appearing in the Annex II ‘State of play of the cooperation with the EU with respect to commitments taken to implement tax good governance principles’ on January 23, 2018 and which have all made commitments to the EU on reforming their tax laws.
The list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions now covers nine jurisdictions: American Samoa, Bahamas, Guam, Namibia, Palau, Samoa, St Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago and US Virgin Islands.
In June 2015, the European Commission published its first pan EU List of third country non-cooperative tax jurisdictions. This list was a consolidated list of all member states national lists and was not reflecting a formal listing process at EU level. This was therefore largely contested.
“Thirty countries, including Seychelles were at that time in June 2015 mapped as a country appearing in several member states national lists,” the communiqué says
The launch of the formal production of an EU list started in 2016 where the commission reviewed third countries risk level to decide on their inclusion in the screening exercise.
The screening took place in 2017 and consisted in assessing the included third countries tax regimes. Based on the result of this assessment and the commitments taken, the final stage was the listing of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions.
Ministers said January's delisting signaled that the process was working as countries around the world were agreeing to adopt EU standards on tax transparency.