(English) Owens Foresees the End of Tax Havens

From The International Tax Review

Jeffrey Owens, director of the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, believes the Organisation’s reviews of transparency and information exchange will see the end of tax havens.

“Tax havens are going to cease to be tax havens at the end of this process,” Owens said. “We’ve changed attitudes among governments and the financial community.”

The latest 10 reports released by the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax show that Barbados, the Seychelles, San Marino and Trinidad and Tobago fall short of global standards on transparency and must make improvements before they can progress to the second stage of the process, which looks at how information is being exchanged in practice.

“Every country had something they could improve, but some had significant improvements they needed to make,” said Owens.

The OECD found deficiencies in Barbados’s bilateral treaties and reported that the country has not yet signed new agreements with all jurisdictions wishing to do so. These issues will need to be addressed before the country can progress to the next phase of evaluation.

The Organisation also found deficiencies in the Seychelles regarding the availability of ownership and accounting information for offshore entities and concluded that powers to access information should be strengthened.

The OECD has completed 19 reports and plans to complete 60 by the end of the year. Owens is confident that the process is having a positive impact.

“There’s still tax planning, but the days of banks using offshore havens to evade tax are coming to an end,” Owens said.