It includes countries like Gibraltar and excludes others such as Russia, which has not shared information with the European Union since the outbreak of war.
The Ministry of Finance and Public Functions has updated the order in which it updates its blacklist of tax havens. In the document published Friday in the BOE, 24 countries appear under the new criteria under consideration in the anti-fraud law. The list is much larger than that of the 12 countries included in the list used by the OECD. But it’s exactly half of the 48 territories that appeared in it when it started being drafted 30 years ago.
The Ministry of Finance indicates that the list has been shortened “because specific information exchange agreements or agreements have been signed to prevent double taxation with an information exchange clause”. However, countries like Gibraltar will appear in 2023, which do have an information exchange agreement.
In total, the Treasury includes Anguilla, Bahrain, Barbados, Bermuda, Dominica, Fiji, Gibraltar, Guam, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Mariana Islands, Solomon Islands, Turks and Caixos Islands on the new blacklist: British Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands, Jersey, Palau, Samoa, American Samoa, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago, Vanuatu.
When the draft of the document was released in mid-January, organizations such as Intermón Oxfam wondered whether the list did not include regions such as Ireland, Luxembourg or even the Netherlands, countries it accuses of unfair tax competition.
According to the most recent public data available from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Spain is failing to collect around €4,300 million annually as large companies divert part of their profits to these areas where the taxes are much more favorable. According to this information, the figure corresponds to 18% of what the state imported in 2019 (year to which the latest data refers) for corporate income tax,
The anti-fraud law now requires the state to meet criteria beyond being transparent in determining which countries to blacklist. Also of fiscal equity, “identifying those areas characterized by facilitating the existence of offshore companies aimed at attracting benefits without real economic activity.”
From the Ministry of Finance, they also refer to the pursuit of the existence of low or no taxation, or those areas of opaque information or lack of transparency, as well as “the non-existence with that country of rules for the exchange of tax information” is discovered. “, due to the lack of an effective exchange of information with Spain or due to the results of the evaluations carried out by the Global Forum on the effectiveness of the exchange of information with said countries and territories”.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
