Gibraltar continues its progress on removal from EU Tax Haven Lists

04/06/2015

Poland has become the latest Jurisdiction to update its schedule of countries and territories that it considers to be non-cooperative and thus discriminates against. Gibraltar, as promised by the Polish authorities, has now been removed from this schedule; thus relieving Gibraltar companies from previously held restrictions or restrictive measures.

This follows the steps taken by HM Government of Gibraltar to ensure compliance withInternational standards and to extend its network of tax information exchange agreements including through the Multilateral Convention, the adoption of the Common Reporting Standard,the further bilateral exchange agreements and the FATCA arrangements with the United Kingdom and the United States of America. 

Poland thus joins a number of other countries that have taken similar measures to recognise Gibraltar as an internationally cooperative jurisdiction in the area of tax information exchange.Over the last six months or so, Canada, Estonia and Italy have also similarly removed Gibraltar
from their lists.

A further two countries have confirmed to the Gibraltar authorities that they are in the process of internal legislative or parliamentary procedures to remove Gibraltar from their lists of countries with preferential tax regimes or similar schedules that attract countermeasures. These will be made public as and when these countries confirm these procedures have been completed.

The Ministry for Financial Services continues to focus on and lobby a further small number of countries calling upon them with the support of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to remove Gibraltar from any lists discriminating against the Jurisdiction.

The Minister with responsibility for Financial Services, the Hon Albert Isola said, “I with the support of senior officials from my Ministry have been working very hard over the last two years to ensure that those countries with which we have effective tax information exchange but continued to have us on so called ‘Tax Haven’ lists, recognise our internationally cooperative stance and remove us from such lists.

I am delighted that in recent months Poland, Canada, Estonia and Italy have done so with a further two countries at a well advanced stage.

We continue to target the small number of remaining jurisdictions that, unfairly, still list us despite the effectiveness of our information sharing with them.

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