It's reported in the Isle of Man this morning that:
The chief minister has dismissed demands from Labour leader Ed Miliband for talks with the Isle of Man and the Channel islands 'over tax evasion'.
In the United Kingdom press at the weekend, it was reported Mr Miliband would call for negotiations to begin with the governments of the Crown dependencies.
It was also claimed he would demand ministers follow up the talks, with threats to shame the islands on the international stage by placing them on a globally recognised blacklist.
Allan Bell says he has only just received assurances from the UK government that it is happy with the way the Isle of Man is regulated.
Perhaps Mr Bell hasn't noticed that Miliband is, I presume, disagreeing with the government on this issue and saying Labour would do something different? In which case he needs to wake up and smell the coffee.
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Further report and comments here: http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/miliband_declares_war_on_offshore_jurisdictions_1_4145835
The Isle of Man produces Chief Ministers who have an impentrable form of teflon coating. With Mr Bell making virtually every member of the Parliament either a Minister or a politicial member for a department (ie a Junior Minister) he has no opposition.
He can say and do what he likes when he likes. An attitude that permeates down through the Civil Service.
No need to smell the coffee here. I think all we are smelling is roses.
We’re smelling something totally different to roses: The susbatnce we’re smelling just LOOKS like roses.
Short BBC video on “Manx accounts ‘should be fairer’ ” worth watching:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-16587453?
Needless to say, Mr Bell says the Labur party is “ill informed”.
Another, slightly longer, version of the same story reports Mr Bell as adding
“We will continue to work towards being a model of political stability, transparency and financial supervision.”
Working towards maybe – but in that case they have some way to go! And I suspect what he really means is that they are working towards giving the impression of being all those things while changing as little as possible.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-16578469
Whatever Mr Bell may say, it seems some in the industry are indeed worried about the turn things are taking. Witness this telling comment on the iom today site by “theauthority” – who I believe works in the island’s financial services sector:
“Milband is just flag waving here, it’s all he’s capable of doing. The coalition government are moving fast to introduce a GAAR (General Anti-Avoidence Rule) which will achieve what Milband is shouting about. He just doesn’t want them to get all the political points. That said the GAAR will be hugly costly for the Isle of Man and with the real dangers of the potential EU Savings Directive and FATCA leglislation (in America) the Isle of Man financial industry is going to be under real pressure in the next few years. Luckily the governments insistance on retaining ZeroTen will stand us in about as good a stead as is possible under the circumstances. Batten down the hatches people. ”
http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/miliband_declares_war_on_offshore_jurisdictions_1_4145835
The IOM fight-back continues, with the Guardian group now in the line of fire:
“While [Mr Bell] said he didn’t believe there would be any ‘underlying problems’ for the Isle of Man as a result, he said he expected ‘some negative comment from the Guardian group’ on ‘what they see as a dysfunctional capitalist system generally’. ”
“The Isle of Man is fully co-operative with the UK. We have an automatic tax exchange agreement with the UK and we were the first jurisdiction to agree to an automatic exchange agreement with the whole of the EU.”
The newspaper reports that it has “asked the Labour Party central office whether Ed Miliband genuinely believes the Isle of Man is not as well regulated as the UK, and asked the party to provide figures showing the number of people/amount of money that has been put into the Isle of Man illegally and what evidence it had of the island’s non-co-operation with UK authorities.”
Brilliant! It’s now up to the Labour party to provide the IOM with the figures it is asking for and which obviously they don’t and cannot have? Sounds like the same twisted logic as the ITEAs.
http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/miliband_is_using_us_as_a_scapegoat_1_4149108
Criticism of Miliband mounts in the Isle of Man, with government protesting against the BBC’s reporting of its “‘ill-informed parroting of Labour rhetoric’ ” and its description of IOM as a “world-famous tax haven”:
http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/criticism_of_miliband_mounts_1_4160733
Inevitable
Schopenhauer was bang on the money when he said that truth goes through three stages. In the first stage, it is ridiculed. In the second stage, it is violently opposed. And in the third stage, which of course is where we are now, it is accepted as self-evident.
We’re somewhere between 1 and 2 here
Agreed. Methinks they protest too much!
On a slightly different tack, IOM is proud to announce that it is now “in first place in respect of the largest number of non-UK incorporated AIM top 100 companies”, with a market share of 18.6%, ahead of (the well-known tax havens of) Bermuda and the BVI – in second and third place respectively.
http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/business/dominance_in_aim_listings_1_4140664
This news is also reported here:
http://www.tax-news.com/news/AIMListed_Firms_Prefer_IoM____53279.html
I know little about this subject other than that AIM-listed companies are (or so I understand) subject to less regulation than LSE-listed ones and that there are certain tax advantages (as well as more risk) for investors. But one could well wonder what these companies, with a “current market capital of £1.14bn”, actually DO on such a small island. The mind boggles 🙂 As to who they are – who can say? The official AIM website appears to have no search facility by geographic location. An independent site at http://www.aimlisting.co.uk does have such a facility, but a search for Isle of Man companies returns the helpful message “Sorry but no results were found” (same result for Bahamas, Jersey & Guernsey and just one company under BVI – but around 30 in East Anglia). Obviously providing information to this site is optional – but is anyone surprised that not one of the 50 IOM-incorporated AIM companies choses to do so?
The IOM Minister for the Department of Economic Development, John Shimmin MHK, is reported as saying: ‘This research shows the Isle of Man performing very well in the AIM market despite difficult market conditions and serves to illustrate that the island is the preferred gateway to London for international corporate capital raising requirements. This is another example of how the Isle of Man is a significant contributor to the City of London and why the Crown Dependencies are important to the UK economy as a whole.’
No doubt this will be on the agenda when the Lord Mayor of the City of London visits the island next week:
http://www.isleofman(dot)com/News/business/article.aspx?article=42865
“The Isle of Man has been building relations with the Lord Mayor’s Office in recent years, and one of Alderman Wootton’s predecessors in the role, Alderman David Lewis, described the Island as a ‘core asset’ for the City.”