TJN: OECD’s tax evasion work ineffective

Tax Justice Network published this report today to say that the OECD's standards on tax information sharing and transparency are ineffective and even hamper the development of better standards.

TJN notes:

"...the OECD is running a 'black, white and grey' list of jurisdictions, according to its 'internationally agreed tax standard. The blacklist is empty. The grey list consists of three jurisdictions - Nauru, Niue and Guatemala. On this measure, everyone else is clean! Including some of the world's dirtiest secrecy jurisdictions, such as Panama, the British Virgin Islands and the UAE (Dubai.)

[the report shows that ] By ruling out the much better and already widely practiced alternative of automatic information exchange, the massive problem of undetected tax evasion and illicit financial flows remains unaddressed by the Global Forum process.

'It is remarkable to see how a flawed standard, created by notorious secrecy jurisdictions such as Bermuda, Cayman Islands and Mauritius together with OECD's tax havens in 2001/2002, are still so prominent. With those standards as its backbone, the G20's famous crackdown on financial secrecy remains a farce. We need to get serious about clamping down on cross-border tax evasion.'"