[2018-01-23] EU ministers remove Panama and 7 others from tax haven blacklist

[P2Pfinder]

I'm not sure this could be considered as a good news, because means that now all new (but old too) bank accounts should be investigated easily by EU autorities   A lot of bitcoiners have opened bank accounts in Panama for cashing out their bitcoin into FIAT.

SOURCE: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-tax-blacklist/eu-ministers-remove-panama-and-7-others-from-tax-haven-blacklist-idUSKBN1FC13K

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union finance ministers confirmed on Tuesday that eight jurisdictions were removed from the bloc’s blacklist of tax havens, one month after the list was set up.

Barbados, Grenada, the Republic of Korea, Macao, Mongolia, Panama, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates are the jurisdictions that have been delisted “following commitments made at a high political level to remedy EU concerns,” the EU said in a statement.

The move is in line with recommendations by EU tax experts, the so-called Code of Conduct Group.

The detailed commitments made by the eight jurisdictions have not been made public, despite calls to do so by the EU tax commissioner Pierre Moscovici.

EU states decided last month to draw up the blacklist in a bid to discourage the most aggressive tax dodging practices after several disclosures of off-shore schemes, including the Panama Papers.

Jurisdictions that remain on the blacklist are American Samoa, Bahrain, Guam, the Marshall Islands, Namibia, Palau, Saint Lucia, Samoa, and Trinidad and Tobago.

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[buwaytress]

Actually, this is pretty old news, depending on how you look at it. There isn't one global "blacklist" when it comes to tax havens, and as a result, there are several regional blocs that come together (along with their central banks and national central banks) to review their own "lists". Compliance with these lists (or removal from them) actually is very, very easy. You just need an audit, complete checklists and you're clean.

In June 2017, the OECD only left one tax haven on its so-called blacklist: Trinidad and Tobago, but this list has been revised over the years.

If you look at the US's blacklist, it's full to the brim, with countries like Netherlands still considered under its vague but strict FATCA, but guess what? US is seen as the number one violator, refusing to adhere to the biggest near-global Common Reporting Standards by OECD, for fear that it wouldn't meet requirements. Eseentially, US demands information sharing from everyone else, but refuses to share back.

In objective views, the US is fingered as one big tax haven because of this veil.

Hint: Trinidad and Tobago still refuses to comply, since it sees its tax haven tag as a good thing. I don't see why any Bitcoiner would want to avoid tax, but here's where you can go. Hint: easy online setup.