Thursday, 12 March 2009
Singapore to be added to OECD list of non-cooperative tax centres: La Tribune
Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria and Hong Kong will be added to the OECD’s list of non-cooperative tax centres, French newspaper La Tribune said yesterday, without giving details of its source, according to Reuters.
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Singapore to be added to OECD list of non-cooperative tax centres: La Tribune
Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria and Hong Kong will be added to the OECD’s list of non-cooperative tax centres, French newspaper La Tribune said yesterday, without giving details of its source, according to Reuters.
The newspaper said the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development would include around 30 countries out of 84 that were examined. It also said the list could be revised between now and the summit of G-20 leaders on April 2.
“According to our information, the OECD has notably added Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, Singapore and Hong Kong to the list which already includes Andorra, Lichtenstein and Monaco,” the newspaper said.
An OECD spokesman denied there was a new list of non-cooperative tax centres.
“What the OECD has done is that we have responded to requests to some G-20 members for information concerning different countries and territories’ approaches to the issue of exchange of information for tax purposes and it will be up to the G-20 countries as a group to decide what they do with this information,” he said.
The paper said the G-20 group of industrialised and emerging economic powers was debating whether to make the list public. It said France and Germany wanted the document to be published.
France and Germany last week proposed new steps against non-cooperative tax centres and called for a revised set of criteria to draw up the new list.
One proposal was to make financial institutions spell out in their annual reports if they worked with non-cooperative centres. Another was to make supervisory authorities take this extra risk into account in the capital requirements for these institutions.
Last Friday, Singapore’s Finance Ministry said it has agreed to endorse the OECD standard for the exchange of information through Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreements (DTAs), reported Reuters.
“The decision to endorse the OECD standard is in keeping with Singapore’s role as a trusted centre for finance and a responsible jurisdiction, with strong and consistent regulatory policies and a firm commitment to the rule of law,” the ministry said in a statement.
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