28.03.2023
The Economic and Financial Affairs Council of the EU (ECOFIN) meeting on 14 February 2023 added four jurisdictions – British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, Marshall Islands and Russia – for a list of jurisdictions which not cooperating for tax purposes.
These four jurisdictions joined American Samoa, Anguilla, the Bahamas, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Panama, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the US Virgin Islands and Vanuatu on the list of non-cooperative Annex I jurisdictions for tax purposes. Thereby “EU tax blacklist” now has 16 jurisdictions.
The list of jurisdictions with outstanding obligations (Annex II, also known as “grey list”), and now includes: Aruba, Albania, Armenia, Belize, Botswana, Curaçao, Dominica, Eswatini, Hong Kong, Israel, Malaysia, Montserrat, Jordan, Qatar, Seychelles, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam. Barbados, Jamaica, North Macedonia and Uruguay fulfilled their obligations and were removed from this list.
Both approved annexes contain a brief rationale for the inclusion of each jurisdiction in the respective lists. As is known, Latvia’s “black list” copies the EU’s black list, so it is expected that Russia will soon be considered offshore for tax purposes in Latvia as well. If this happens, it will mean, as a minimum, that tax will be withheld from payments to Russia and transactions with Russian companies will be considered related party transactions.
Source: Gravel (www.sorainen.com)the author writes: Aija Lasmane
