Signed today — and slipped out on HMRC’s web site without a press release (I wonder why?) is a double tax agreement (yes, I mean that — a DTA, not a Tax Information Exchange Agreement) with the Cayman islands.
It’s available here.
It’s not, I hasten to add a full blown DTA.
But then, it’s not a full blown TIEA either.
In fact the extraordinary thing is that the information exchange clause is far less onerous than a TIEA. So, for example, there is no reference to the need for the parties to be able to prove beneficial ownership of trusts, companies and other arrangements in their territories, which i TIEA should require.
For all practical purposes this renders the thing (let’s call it a ‘thing’ because there appears no proper name as yet for such a botch) pretty close to useless, and certainly of less use than the already near useless TIEAs.
The real question is — who asked for the downgrade on this point — the UK or Cayman? The former will have at least as many problems as the latter in complying.
Either way this is a massive embarrassment to the UK — and no way for Gordon brown to pursue his campaign on tax havens.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Not much changes then.
[…] Fiddles Agreement With Cayman Tax Haven 15 June, 2009 — RickB Everyone should read Richard Murphy! Signed today — and slipped out on HMRC’s web site without a press release (I wonder why?) is […]
[…] It’s time to get acts together. Cayman has, I am pretty sure, rumbled this. And as a result are going to get away with a DTA that is almost meaningless. […]
[…] made my position clear on this yesterday and the Guardian quoted me in another part of the article referred […]