TIEAs are not for fishing

(CNS): When it comes to offshore business at present all eyes are on Jeffrey Owens, the OECD’s Director of Tax Policy and Administration who has played an instrumental role in encouraging Offshore Financial Centers to sign tax information exchange agreements or TIEAs as part of a move away from bank secrecy and towards transparency. Owens who is scheduled as headline speaker at the forthcoming Offshore Alert conference next week recently said the agreements do not allow countries to go on "fishing expeditions" for information about taxpayers.

Offshore Alert organizers said Owens will be presenting on this, one of the most topical issues in the offshore world when he delivers a key-note address entitled "Tax Co-Operation: Risks and Opportunities" at the 7th Annual OffshoreAlert Financial Due Diligence Conference, which will take place in Miami Beach, Florida 26-28 April.

Owens has said that TIEAs respect a taxpayers’ right to privacy and the rights of countries to "tailor their own tax systems to their own needs." Over the last five months, 27 TIEAs have been signed or announced, including 11 by Bermuda and seven by the Cayman Islands, stated Owens.

As well as explaining the issues surrounding TIEAs he will look at "What’s Next" for OFCs as the international drive towards greater transparency for tax purposes gathers momentum amid the threat of sanctions against countries deemed to be non-cooperative. In the wake of the G20 summit in London he also noted that more progress on tax transparency and cooperation had been made in the last two months than in the last ten years. “We’ve moved very substantially to a level playing field,” he said, adding the recent agreements apply as much to companies as to individuals. “We’re in favour of fair tax competition,” Mr. Owens said. “It’s up to each country to decide its own rate of tax.”

However, Owens has also criticized tax haves for their impact on developing countrieshe recently told Reuters, that tax drainage to havens was equal to 7 or 8 percent of the gross domestic product of the African continent.

Following Owens’ speech, the conference will hear from Wendy Warren, who is the CEO and Executive Director of the Bahamas Financial Services Board. In a speech entitled "The Offshore Perspective outlining her vision of how OFCs must adapt in order to thrive in the current global economic and political climate.

Owens and Warren will also take part in a panel discussion regarding the issues affecting OFCs with Eduardo D’Angelo Silva, Vice Chairman of the Cayman Islands Financial Services Association, David Chenkin, a New York-based attorney and Bob Roach, Counsel and Chief Investigator to the U. S. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, which is chaired by U. S. Senator Carl Levin, the principal sponsor of the ‘Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act’, which is currently being considered by Congress.

So far, 250 people from 28 countries have registered to attend the conference, which will look at the latest developments in Offshore Financial Center