By Laura Bonilla / La NacionParis (AFP). Last Tuesday, the OECD removed Costa Rica, Malaysia and the Philippines from its tax paradise “black list”, which was emptied after these countries made the commitment to follow the international laws about the tax standard on exchange of information.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced the removal of Uruguay on Friday from the “black list”; diffused last April 2nd from the G20 meeting gathered that day in London. In a press conference, the Secretary General of the OECD, Ángel Gurría, congratulated.
Uruguay, Costa Rica, Philippines and Malaysia for their commitments, for taking decisions (of commitment to adopt international standards) and informed the decision”.
These four jurisdictions have completely made a commitment to exchange information (…) and I’m happy that none of the 84 jurisdictions, normally examined by the OECD, are in the ‘non-commitment’ and ‘not-adopted standards’ category”, affirmed.
“It’s an important progress”, highlighted. The OECD Secretary General remembered that Uruguay was the first country to be out of the list, just 24 hours of being included in it. We advanced on Friday, we thought Uruguay was doing enough, affirmed.
This allows the four countries to pass to a “gray list” from the OECD, that is integrated by other 38 jurisdictions that have made the commitment to respect the international tax standards, but have not yet substantially implemented them, among these countries are Chile, Guatemala, Panama, Belize, Dominica, Gibraltar,
Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Austria y Belgium. A third “white list” identifies the countries or territories that have “substantially” applied the standard.
The sanction matter isn’t relevant at this point. We are centered in the progresses realized” in the 84 jurisdictions, sustained Gurría.
Secretary General of the OECD was consulted several times about the reason Hong Kong and Macao, special administrative regions under the sovereignty of China, were taken out from the gray list in March. China integrates the “white list”.
China has traditionally and fully completed the standard (…), because of that we included (in the list) a foot page which says that that regions under special administration are excluded”, affirmed Gurría.
The issue of the tax paradises arose in November 2008 in the middle of the financial crisis, during a meeting among 17 countries in Paris, organized by France and Germany.
The participants asked the OECD to actualize their “black list” of non-cooperative tax paradises by the middle of 2009, in which Germany wanted Switzerland to be in. At the beginning of the year 2000 the OECD published a “black list” that included three countries: Monaco, Andorra and Liechtenstein.
Because of the fear to be in the actualized list again, Belgium, Austria, Luxemburg, Switzerland, and Monaco, Liechtenstein and Andorra, announced the flexibility of their legislative national regulations over the “tax secret”.
There’s a lot of work to do to ample and adapt the practice of these commitments”, but “I’m sure that there will be progresses in a regular manner”, affirmed Gurría.
The Exterior Relations Minister of Switzerland, Micheline Calmy-Rey, regretted that the list of tax paradises from the OECD depends on “political” criteria and not from “qualitative” criteria.
“They have no qualitative criteria to elaborate these lists”, lamented Calmy-Rey.
“My interpretation is that there could be something concrete at the end of the G20 London Summit (…) but that’s really political criteria”, stated.
