Owens promises white list for Cayman Islands

| 27/07/2009

(BusinessIFC): Jeffrey Owens, director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, has dismissed the possibility that Cayman might not be elevated to the top tier on signature of 12 tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs). "If the government of the Cayman Islands can demonstrate that it has signed 12 high quality tax transparency agreements then it will be admitted to the committed and compliant. The government of the Cayman Islands has said that it wants to sign a network of 30 such agreements. That would be very encouraging,” he said in an interview with BusinessIFC.

Go to article

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Category: Business

About the Author ()

Comments (4)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. Anonymous says:
    28/07/2009 at 1:26 pm

    This appears to be a case of "damned if you do and damned if you don’t". I’m neither UDP nor PPM, so personally I don’t care about all the politrix.  What I am grateful for as a Caymanian is the fact that this present administration appears to be trying to do something. Is it a perfect effort? No, but at least action is being taken which perhaps will place us in a more positive position.

  2. Anonymous says:
    27/07/2009 at 5:20 pm

    I’m not surprized that the PPM supporters have responded to this article.

    • Anonymous says:
      27/07/2009 at 7:03 pm

      Tactics without strategy is PPM.

      The UDP is doing what in two months what the PPM couldn’t do in 4 years.

  3. Anonymous says:
    27/07/2009 at 4:46 pm

    Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat – Sun Tzu 

    There is still no evidence that Cayman’s government has any strategy for dealing with the OECD other than blindly trusting that the OECD has Cayman’s best interest at heart, or believing that if we simply sign and implement a bunch of agreements then they will leave us alone. Any such belief is incredibly naive. 
     
    Mr. Owens’ "promise" if there actually was one, was heavily qualified. The OECD has also gone on record as stating that there is no reason for any financial services business to exist in offshore jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands.
     
    Even if Cayman does get temporarily on the current OECD white list, that does nothing to secure Cayman’s long term future. The article clearly indicates in the last paragraph that the OECD set goal posts are about to shift once again. The next shift will be to a completely opaque "review" process run by OECD states intent on putting their naive smaller competitors out of business. The strategy and tactics at that stage will extend beyond the skill set required to count to 12. What is Cayman doing to move this process out of the hands of the OECD? Other countries in the region have figured this out but our leadership does not seem capable.
     
    The OECD goal posts will continue to shift until every jurisdiction that does not secure its future by securing benefits from the OECD states in exchange for tax information goes out of business. Cayman’s gullible government is being systematic in failing to secure benefits. Anyone who thinks that being on the “white list” will solve Cayman’s problems should read what senior officials in the Channel Islands say about the realities of the white list.
     
     
     
    People might also want to take a look at the types of agreements Cayman’s better informed and better prepared competitors are securing from the OECD states as noted by a previous post.
     
     
     

     

«
»