{"id":20070,"date":"2013-04-12T12:32:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T11:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=20070"},"modified":"2013-04-12T12:34:18","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T11:34:18","slug":"20070","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/04\/12\/20070\/","title":{"rendered":"Austria demands Channel Islands trust registries. And so do I. But they should not be used to block information exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"

There's more from Austria's finance\u00a0minister, Maria Fekter, on what she wants from the EU in\u00a0<\/span>exchange\u00a0for Austria agreeing to tax information exchange in the Guardian<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, let me start by\u00a0saying\u00a0I think that countries trading the right to hide crime is always an unedifying\u00a0spectacle, and that's what is going on here, but it has to be conceded that whilst she does not make a fair point when saying that\u00a0the European Union cannot force Austria to reform its controversial banking secrecy laws without also forcing the UK to crack down on tax havens in its jurisdiction, she could say it could and should do both.<\/span><\/p>\n

She's said:<\/p>\n

\"We want a trust registry for the Channel Islands, but also for countries where British law applies such as the Cayman Islands, Virgin Islands or Gibraltar,\" she said in\u00a0an interview with Austria's Kurier newspaper. \"These are all areas that are havens for tax refugees.\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And I wholeheartedly agree.<\/p>\n

As the Guardian also notes:<\/p>\n

In another interview with\u00a0Austria's Die Presse<\/a>\u00a0she said the UK should be forced to ban anonymous directorships of companies and trusts. \"What we demand of\u00a0Cyprus<\/a>, a small island, we also demand of the UK,\" she said referring to the EU's ban of anonymous directorships in Cyprus as a condition of the island's bailout.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And again, she's right.<\/p>\n

It almost looks as if she's been reading my material and that of the\u00a0Tax Justice Network.<\/p>\n

She should remember we also call for full, automatic,\u00a0multilateral\u00a0information exchange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s more from Austria’s finance\u00a0minister, Maria Fekter, on what she wants from the EU in\u00a0exchange\u00a0for Austria agreeing to tax information exchange in the Guardian. Now,
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}