The European Union has added several jurisdictions to its list of uncooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes. These are Costa Rica, the Marshall Islands, the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and Russia, which "have not engaged in a constructive dialogue with the EU on tax governance or fulfilled their commitments to implement the necessary reforms".
The EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions is based primarily on the Global Forum's rating of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) for automatic information exchange and the Exchange of Information on Request (EOIR) standard.
The OECD has downgraded the BVI from "largely compliant" to "partially compliant" in terms of tax transparency, so its inclusion in the EU list should come as no surprise.
In a statement, the BVI Government said it is committed to compliance and has already implemented several legislative changes* that should enable it to meet the requirement of the review it requested from the Global Forum by 2023.
[*The BVI Business Companies (Amendment) Act 2022 and associated regulations which, among other things, abolish the use of bearer shares].
As a reminder, EU Member States may, apply various administrative measures against listed jurisdictions such as enhanced transaction monitoring, increased risk audits for taxpayers, non-deductibility of costs, controlled foreign company rules, withholding tax measures and limitation of participation exemption on shareholders' dividends.
The list is as follows:
- American Samoa
- Anguilla
- Bahamas
- British Virgin Islands
- Costa Rica
- Fiji
- Guam
- Marshall Islands
- Palau
- Panama
- Russia
- Samoa
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Turks and Caicos Islands
- Virgin Islands (US)
- Vanuatu
For more information, please contact office@rosemont-mc.com