EU finance ministers prepare #TaxHaven blacklist

European Union finance ministers will discuss plans today (8 November) to draw up a blacklist of tax havens across the world, the EU presidency said, a move towards imposing wider sanctions on offending states and jurisdictions, writes Francesco Guarascio.

Ministers would look at criteria for identifying suspect states, the presidency said - disagreements over the definition of a haven and other details have hampered past efforts to fight tax avoidance.

EU members agreed in May to agree a common list by the end of next year following an outcry over revelations in the Panama Papers about how some multinationals and wealthy individuals were avoiding paying tax.

Human rights group Oxfam welcomed the plans and said the blacklist should include Switzerland and some states within the European Union that it identified as corporate tax havens, including "the Netherlands, Belgium, Cyprus and Luxembourg."

"Tax havens are helping big business cheat countries and their citizens out of billions of dollars in tax every year. By starving countries of money needed for education, healthcare and job creation tax havens are exacerbating poverty and inequality across the world," Oxfam added in a statement.

The EU's 28 member states currently have their own blacklists of so-called "non-cooperative jurisdictions", but these differ and each country is free to decide which restrictive measures to impose, if any. Some lists are empty.

The European Commission named 81 countries and jurisdictions in September that have a higher chance of facilitating tax avoidance and may be subject to further screening and even sanctions.

"We will focus just on the quality of calibration and not on the listing of names today," Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir said, arriving at the meeting in Brussels. Slovakia holds the rotating EU presidency until the end of the year.

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