Jersey has signed a tax information exchange agreement (TIEA) with the UK.
As the Guardian says (with edits):
Terry Le Sueur, chief minister of the Channel islands tax haven of Jersey, is due in London today to sign a novel agreement which will share information about offshore tax dodging.
Treasury sources said yesterday the deal with Jersey had been "a long time coming", but was a result of the changed international climate.
The UK has been trying to persuade it to sign a deal for more than four years.
In 2007, members of the island's regime complained publicly they might lose business as a result, particularly to Switzerland, where tax evasion by foreigners has not been regarded as a crime.
Quite so. Jersey has resisted this for as long as it has been possible for it to do so.
Don’t expect them to cooperate with the UK now we have it. Jersey’s agreement with the USA has been used four times since 2001. Cayman, with its stronger ties with the USA has budgeted to deal with just 120 enquiries in the current financial year.
This is not cooperation: this is political gesturing. I hate to say it, but TIEAs are hardly worth the paper they are written on.
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Richard
Jersey does minimal US business. 4 uses of the TIEA of the US is perfectly feasible as a result. Turn it on its head. How much US business do you think Jersey does and, based on that, how many exchanges of information would you expect to see ? Its very hard to see high levels of exchange when next to no business is done with the other jurisdiction ! Why do you think the figure should be much higher ? Which businesses in Jersey do you believe are actually writing US business ? I certainly don’t know anyone who will even consider dealing with US residents or citizens.
I can’t really comment on Cayman as it clearly does a lot of US-related business. But I don’t believe its government is capable of even gathering the information which would enable it to exchange !
Rupert
We don’t believe Jersey could capture the data either
I’ll do a blog
Richard
Richard
I think where I’m coming from is that at least the JFSC have the mechanisms to go to the regulated FSP and obtain any information which they don’t already have, whereas in Cayman it seems (if my understanding is correct) that even that mechanism is not actually in place. Similarly the vast majority of Cayman-registered funds are run from everywhere other than Cayman and so the identities of the fund investors are not even held in Cayman or known to the Cayman FSP. I;m not totally convinced that my understanding in Cayman is up to speed though and it may be that I’m doing Cayman a dis-service by saying this.
[…] now Jersey has signed its tax information exchange agreement with the UK. This is not worth the paper it is written on. There are two good […]
[…] And TIEAs are not giving rise to any meaningful information exchange, as my previous blog has shown. […]