Council cuts Anguilla, Dominica, Seychelles from EU blacklist of tax havens

Oct. 5 (UPI) -- The European Council cut Tuesday Anguilla, Dominica and Seychelles from the European Union's blacklist of tax havens.

"The Council decided to remove Anguilla, Dominica and Seychelles from the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes," the Council said Tuesday in a statement.

Anguilla, a British overseas territory in the eastern Caribbean, had been placed on the tax havens list, along with the mountainous Caribbean island nation Dominica and east African country Seychelles, because they did not meet the EU's tax transparency criteria.

The criteria these three failed to meet was for them to be ranked as at least "largely compliant" by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Global Forum regarding the exchange of information on request.

The decision to remove all three from the tax haven list followed a decision by the Global Forum to grant these jurisdictions a supplementary review.

All three committed to implementing good tax governance principles to be removed from the list pending the Global Forum's supplementary review, according to the Council, and have now been placed on the "grey list" instead.

"Pending the granted supplementary review, Anguilla, Dominica and Seychelles, are now included in the state of play document (Annex II), which covers jurisdictions that do not yet comply with all international tax standards but that have committed to implementing tax good governance principles," the Council said in the statement.

Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Malaysia, North Macedonia, Qatar and Uruguay were also placed on the "grey list," and Australia, Eswantini and Maldives were removed from it following necessary tax reforms.

The Council added that it called on Turkey earlier this year to commit to "automatic information exchange," with all member states, but the country remains on the "grey list."

"Even though progress has since been made, further steps need to be taken," the Council's statement said.

The blacklist comes with administrative penalties.

Jurisdictions which remaining on the blacklist, include American Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Panama, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Vanuatu.

The criteria for the blacklist and "grey list," which the Council revises twice a year, focus on "tax transparency, fair taxation and prevention of tax base erosion and profit shifting," according to the Council's statement.

The Council said the practice was established in 2017 to "promote global good governance."