{"id":39629,"date":"2017-11-30T06:12:06","date_gmt":"2017-11-30T06:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=39629"},"modified":"2017-11-30T06:12:06","modified_gmt":"2017-11-30T06:12:06","slug":"will-the-eu-undermine-its-cause-by-not-putting-any-eu-state-on-its-tax-haven-blacklist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2017\/11\/30\/will-the-eu-undermine-its-cause-by-not-putting-any-eu-state-on-its-tax-haven-blacklist\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the EU undermine its cause by not putting any EU state on its tax haven blacklist?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reuters has reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The European Union\u2019s tax commissioner on Tuesday called on the bloc\u2019s governments to be ambitious when they decide on a common blacklist of tax havens next week and said European funding to countries on the list should be frozen.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As noted here recently, the EU tax haven black list is due to be announced next week. The Tax Justice Network thinks<\/a> 41 states should be listed, and an additional six EU member states, which are Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands and the United Kingdom. None of those places will surprise anyone and the EU has appeared to be thorough, having\u00a0screened 92 jurisdictions worldwide against the threefold criteria of tax transparency, use of harmful tax practices and cooperation on fiscal matters.<\/p>\n

But it looks as if the EU is going to fail the real test. It seems certain that no EU\u00a0country will end up on the blacklist. And those places who are not compliant but have committed to change their tax rules are likely to be included in a separate, \u201cgrey list\u201d, as several EU officials call it, which might not be made public. According to Reuters:<\/p>\n

\n

A Commission spokeswoman said on Tuesday that all EU states \u201cfully comply\u201d with the criteria set to establish the tax havens\u2019 blacklist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But added:<\/p>\n

Some EU states still applied \u201charmful tax practices which lead to aggressive tax planning\u201d, and cited cases in Britain, Malta and the Netherlands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That, however, does not look to be enough to ensure blacklisting. And that means this list has no credibility from the outset.<\/p>\n

When will we learn that beating abuse requires naming and shaming those undertaking it? That, thankfully, is happening elsewhere now. Why not in tax? It's overdue and the EU will make a fool of itself if it does not deliver.<\/p>\n

\n

Alex Cobham has written a damning piece on this for the EU Observer, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reuters has reported: The European Union\u2019s tax commissioner on Tuesday called on the bloc\u2019s governments to be ambitious when they decide on a common blacklist
 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":[44,80,10,55,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-secrecy-jurisdictions","category-tax-avoidance","category-tax-evasion","category-tax-havens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39629","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=39629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}