The European Union is expected to considerably expand its blacklist of tax havens on Tuesday, including Bermuda. “My expectation is that the updated blacklist to be agreed at the ECOFIN will contain 15 countries, and the updated gray list 23 countries,” Pierre Moscovici, European commissioner for economic and financial affairs as well as taxation told POLITICO.
The list was first put together in 2017 to name and shame “non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes,” and will be amended at a meeting of EU economy and finance ministers on Tuesday in Brussels.
Seven countries are to be moved back from a gray list because commitments previously made “have not been respected,” Moscovici told POLITICO in an interview in his office today. “These are Aruba, Belize, Bermuda, Fiji, Oman, Vanuatu and Dominica.”
They are joined by five more countries entering the naughty list for the first time, whose tax regimes, according to the Commission’s assessment, have gotten worse over the past months, “[these] are Barbados, the United Arab Emirates — that’s still being debated — and the Marshall Islands,” said Moscovici.
Five countries remain blacklisted “because they have not taken any commitment with the EU ever since” they got on the list of tax havens: “American Samoa, Guam, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” Moscovici said — adding that is “very American.”
