The latest additions on EU blacklist

On 14 February 2023, the EU Finance Ministers added four jurisdictions on blacklist of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes:

• British Virgin Islands – found not to be sufficiently in compliance with the OECD standard on exchange of information,
• Costa Rica – for its foreign source income exemption regime,
• Marshall Islands – facilitate offshore structures and arrangements aimed to attracting profits without real economic substance,
• Russia – because of its violations of the good tax governance criteria set out in the EU Code of Conduct as well as the dialogue on tax matters following the conflict in Ukraine.

In addition, the EU added Albania, Aruba and Curaçao to its grey list and removed Barbados, Jamaica, North Macedonia and Uruguay for fulfilling their previous commitments.

Following this latest revision, the EU blacklist includes the sixteen jurisdictions: American Samoa, Anguilla, The Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, Fiji, Guam, Marshall Islands, Palau, Panama, Russian Federation, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, US Virgin Islands and Vanuatu.

The EU’s grey list now includes the following eighteen jurisdictions: Albania, Armenia, Aruba, Belize, Botswana, Curaçao, Dominica, Eswatini, Hong Kong (SAR), Israel, Jordan, Malaysia, Monserrat, Qatar, Seychelles, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

The EU asks all listed countries to work towards compliance with international standards in taxation with the next update scheduled for October 2023.