EU tax haven blacklist review

On Tuesday 5 October, European economic and finance ministers will meet to approve an update to the EU’s list of tax havens. This comes in the midst of global tax negotiations with world leaders expected to reach an agreement at the end of this month.

As in recent years, Oxfam does not expect the list to capture real tax havens as the listing criteria remain far too weak:
• The EU list currently features only 1 out of the 12 countries in the world with a 0% tax rate. This changes to none, if the official update confirms the delisting of Anguilla;
• the EU list features only 1 out of the 17 tax havens where EU banks are operating, and;
• the Cayman Islands are absent from the list despite having a level of pre-tax profits per employee of 36 million US dollars. That is more than 1000 times higher than the level of pre-tax profit per employee in Brazil, a country whose population is 3000 times the size of the Cayman Islands.

The blacklisting criteria are currently being reviewed by the EU countries and the European Commission. For a more effective list that captures real tax havens, Oxfam recommends the EU to:

• Automatically blacklist zero and very low corporate tax jurisdictions, and; • better assess the lack of real economic activity of businesses in a country as a red flag indicator of corporate tax avoidance.

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