The Ministry of Finance has launched an order for public hearing and information in which it updates the order, to which contributions can be made from this Friday, May 22, until next June 1.
In the order, the Treasury proposes removing Barbados, Dominica, Gibraltar, Trinidad and Tobago, Seychelles and Samoa from the list. Likewise, the Department headed by Arcadi Spain proposes including Russia in relation to the harmful tax regime.
The Gibraltarian Executive has celebrated the departure from the list of tax havens established by Spain, which will allow the British territory on the peninsula to abandon this classification 35 years after its entry in 1991.
The Government of Gibraltar has assessed this measure in a statement and has stressed that “it has been on the OECD white list since 2009” and “it has never appeared on the European Union’s list of non-cooperative jurisdictions.”
In this sense, he recalled that Spain “expressly committed to removing Gibraltar from its list within a period of two years”, but the Spanish Government did not do so. Consequently, Gibraltar’s chief minister warned that he would consider “withdrawing” from the tax treaty signed in 2021 with the United Kingdom if it did not comply with what was agreed.
Law 36/2006 adapted the term tax havens to the concept of “non-cooperative jurisdictions” and updated the criteria for determining the countries and territories that are considered non-cooperative jurisdictions based on the work carried out internationally, both within the framework of the European Union and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The last update of the list of tax havens took place in February 2023. It is reviewed periodically, considering national and international updates, in order to provide “a firm and updated response” to the use of said countries and territories for fraud purposes.
The new review proposed by the order submitted to hearing and public information aims to reflect these updates and the effective progress made in terms of transparency and fair taxation, as explained by the Treasury in the text.
With the exclusions and inclusion of Russia with regard to the harmful tax regime, the list will consist of Anguilla, Bahrain, Bermuda, Guam, Isle of Man, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Mariana Islands, Solomon Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, British Virgin Islands, Jersey, Palau, American Samoa and Vanuatu.
