EU offshore blacklist

There are thirty countries on the EU Offshore blacklist. The list, created by the European Commission contains those countries, which refused to cooperate in taxing matters. To be registered on the list, a country must had been reported by at least ten EU member countries. The aggregation however, is still a pretty complicated matter, which indicated a huge international diplomatic storm last week.

Countries of the EU offshore blacklist:

Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Brit Virgin- islands, Brunei, Kajmán-islands, Cook- islands, Grenada, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Maldive- islands, Marshall-islands, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Nauru, Niue, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Seychelle-islands, Turks and Caicos-islands, American Virgin-islands, Vanuatu.

It is an interesting addition, that there are three European mini-countries on the list:  Guernsey, Andorra and Monaco. But the countries completely refuse the cooperation are somehow missing from the list. It includes however Niue – a Polynesian island with 1400 people on it, where the GDP does not even reach 9 million euros a year. It is hard to believe, that they mean any threat to the EU.

Financially discreet countries and their leaders are also missing from this list, such as Switzerland, the United Kingdom – standing in an almost equivalently prime location – or the US.  Of course, there can’t be any EU member countries on this list. – England and Germany didn’t even contributed in the process.

Of course the scandal has broken out since the list has been published. Almost all the listed countries asked for removal from the pillory. Beside the objections, it turned out, that the recommendation system itself has some loop holes as well.

The most notorious backlist has been created by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). During the introduction of the International tax standards, the countries listed on the blacklist started to run short. Just like other countries listed on the “grey list” – which contains the insufficiently cooperating countries – ran short as well. In addition, most listed, low taxation countries will inaugurate the Global Taxinformation Exchange, which has been created by the EU and the OECD. With this almost every country listed on the OECD black list, will cooperate the international organizations. In the past few years, they accepted regulations, that essentially putting their own economy in a disadvantageous position, just to be able to match the standards created by OECD, EU and the G20 countries.

It’s still unknown, what the European Union are planning to do with the countries on the blacklist. By the way, the list came in focus, during the alteration process of the EU’s corporation tax.  The aim of this process is, the harmonization of the corporation tax laws in order to achieve equal and fair taxation system throughout the EU member countries. We still don’t know much about the unified, consolidated ratable value of corporation tax in the European Union, only that the negotiations has already started with the members. In principle, the inauguration of this law will be optional, and the inauguration process will be gradational, because this can foreclose the classic forms of tax evasion. However, many tax organizations foretold already, that this way the big multinational companies will obtain even more options for efficient tax planning, and by this, the whole plan backfires on the original purpose of the legislature.