White Clay Matthews Jersey

White Clay Matthews Jersey -

This month I thought I White Clay Matthews Jersey would have a look at the recent listing by the OECD of a range of offshore territories. What is the OECD and what do these lists mean? And what on earth is a TIEA? Lastly, I will consider the implications for Gibraltar and why all this is important to our financial services sector.

As always these are my personal thoughts. I hope this article will go some way to help the general readership of this web site to make some sense of all these developments and their ramifications.

Firstly, what is the OECD - or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development to give it its full name? Established in Paris in 1961, it has 30 member countries and employs some 2,500 people. If you're really interested, you can read the detailed "mission statement" on its website - www.oecd.org - but briefly, the Organisation provides a forum where governments can compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and coordinate domestic and international policies.

So why were we all so interested in its pronouncement on "uncooperative tax havens" at the beginning of April and what was this list that it published? Timed to coincide with the G20 summit (see last month's column for more details of that gathering), it's worth looking at the list in some detail for the answer.

The world's media has focused on terms such as "white, grey and black" lists. Readers of this site are, I am sure, rather more discerning so let's give the sections their proper definitions - as set out by the OECD itself.

Firstly there is a list of 40 countries (or jurisdictions as the OECD prefers to call them) that have "substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard". It will come as no surprise to find OECD members themselves amongst the names.

The next list White Clay Matthews Jersey is the one that should interest us the most because it includes Gibraltar. It features a further 30 countries that are classified as "jurisdictions that have committed to the internationally agreed tax standard, but have not yet substantially implemented". Of course, Gibraltar would ideally like to be upgraded from this so-called "grey" list to the first list - I will look at how she plans to do so below.

Finally there is the third category (the "black" list if you will) of four countries that "have not committed to the internationally agreed tax standard". Only Costa Rica, Malaysia (Labuan), Philippines and Uruguay found themselves in this section. It is interesting to note though that within days of publication of the listings, all four jurisdictions had made commitments to the OECD and were consequently removed from the list. At the time of writing no country currently appears in this third section

So what is the "internationally agreed tax standard"? It was developed by the OECD in co-operation with non-member states and was White Clay Matthews Jersey ratified by the G20 at an earlier meeting in 2004, as well as by a major UN committee. Simply stated, it requires exchange of information on request in all tax matters for the administration and enforcement of domestic tax, without regard to a domestic tax interest requirement or bank secrecy for tax purposes. The agreement goes on to stress that it also provides for extensive safeguards to protect the confidentiality of the information exchanged.

The OECD is currently considering six sanctions against countries - or "tax havens" as it insists on terming them - that do not comply with these rules. These are:

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Increased disclosure requirements for companies and individuals using tax havens;