The EU blacklist, published on 5 December, includes 17 jurisdictions it deems as non-cooperative for tax purposes.
The list drew criticism from the outset for not including any EU countries and not imposing any explicit sanctions.
Changed ways
According to a proposal by EU officials, seen by Reuters, eight jurisdictions may be removed from the list as early as next week after they offered to change their tax rules to bring them in-line with EU requirements.
If successful, Panama, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Barbados, Grenada, Macao, Mongolia and Tunisia will be dropped from the list.
Grenada’s prime minister Keith Mitchell has confirmed the country will more than likely be taken off the list by the end of January.
Mitchell said to newspaper Curacao Chronicle that Grenada should not have been placed on the list in the first place as the country met all EU requirements to be deemed a cooperative jurisdiction.
Still on the list
The jurisdictions that will stay on the list are American Samoa, Bahrain, Guam, the Marshall Islands, Namibia, Palau, Saint Lucia, Samoa and Trinidad and Tobago.
No US territories will be removed, despite the country’s Treasury Department slamming the list on 8 January, saying it “undermines” international standards.
The Treasury said American Samoa and Guam should not be on the list as they were already subject to high international tax standards.
‘Grey list’
According to Reuters, the proposal to remove the jurisdictions was put forward by the EU Code of Conduct Group, which consists of tax experts from 28 EU member states.
If the jurisdictions are removed from the list, they will join 47 countries on the so-called EU “grey list”.
The second list has also been criticised by international bodies as a way of letting jurisdictions off the hook.
Aurore Chardonnet, Oxfam’s EU policy adviser on tax inequality, said in December it is “disturbing” to see mostly small countries on the EU blacklist “while the most notorious tax havens got away on the grey list”.
“The EU has to make sure governments on the grey list follow up on their commitments, or else they must be blacklisted.”
Maria Madrid says:
So now “Black List” jurisdictions can convert to join jurisdictions on the “Grey List” providing they can demonstrate to EU “Code of Conduct Group” a disposition to change their tax rules to an (unspecified but not complete) degree of compliance with EU requirements.
There should be no “Grey List”. … A jurisdiction is either compliant or not, a simple choice between “black” and “white”. This continuing shilly shally only hands time to the tax evading experts to design improved inaccessibility and perplexity. These guys are hard-core professionals and “Codes of Conduct” they eat for breakfast! Scrap the “Grey List” and put them all on a “Black List” that is the only language they will ever understand!