The Guardian has reported the new Cayman double tax treaty, saying:
[The UK has] signed an agreement with .. the Cayman Islands, to enable the Treasury to demand information from the tax haven.
Critics of the government's attempts to rein in tax havens said the Caymans agreement failed in its central purpose and set a precedent that other low-tax countries would want to follow.
The agreement with Cayman Islands is one of 113 double-taxation agreements that the UK has in force. The new one allows for an exchange of information about tax between the Cayman Islands and the UK. Timms said it included "unprecedented" provisions for exchanging information.
An upcoming code of practice for banks is expected to crack down on the use of tax havens by major banking groups. Timms said the code — originally slated for the budget — would be published "shortly".
The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Lord Oakeshott, said: "There is nothing in this feeble treaty that means any person or company is going to pay more tax. The Caymans is a zero-tax nation and this agreement isn't going to change that. For Gordon Brown to trumpet his clampdown at the G20 and then sign bits of worthless paper is a disgrace."
Timms insisted this was not the case. "The game is up. People are realising that if they want to be part of the global economy they have to be willing to exchange information on tax."
I made my position clear on this yesterday and the Guardian quoted me in another part of the article referred to.
But I’m now wondering if Timms knows something that I don’t: that a DTA was needed with Cayman because of the massive use of it by UK banks, and that this dovetails with the Banking Code, on which I know work is continuing apace, but which i have not as yet seen. That’s my best hope. Otherwise I stick with Matthew Oakeshott’s opinion.
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:
Does anybody have access to a list of UK banks with current banking licences in Cayman and any details of how big their operations are out there ?
Rupert
Now you know why we need country-by-country reporting
Welcome on board
Richard
Richard
I’m neutral on country-by-country reporting. My belief is that there is (or used to be) a list of registered banks in Cayman. I don’t recall there being too many UK-owned banking operations, but those who were there were pretty substantial (Barclays and NatWest/Coutts in particular). Apart from those two I doubt if the volume of UK banking business is that large, although those two might potentially more than make up for the snall number of UK players. I simply don’t know and wondered if anybody else knew.
I worked in Cayman until 2002 and it was clear that of the 600 banks registered in Cayman 45 of the 50 largest banks had a presence. As I can recall there are much more than 2 UK banks in the Caymans.
That is all I can say.
Rudolf Elmer
This claims to be a partial list of Cayman banks:
http://www.banksincayman.com/
LOL, I’ve worked for one for 7 years not on that list
Check the following link as the all have to have Banking licences with CIMA (most are B’s)
http://www.cimoney.com.ky/entities/default.aspx
I should add that you cannot see the size of their operations, but a quick google show tell you some info.
Infact if you just take the name of the UK bank and add Cayman on a google search would do the trick.
But a comprehensive list I don’t know Rupert