UK protects the tax-havens

The British government is pushing to water down key parts of an EU crackdown on corporate tax havens at a European Council meeting this week, days after the Paradise Papers leak revealed more evidence of tax dodging in UK overseas territories. Ahead of Tuesday’s ECOFIN meeting of European finance ministers, EU commissioner Pierre Moscovici had called for countries to “rapidly adopt a European tax haven list” in light of the revelations, as well as arguing that such a list should be enforced with “credible and meaningful” sanctions. The UK, however, is reported by Politico to have teamed up Luxembourg and Malta to push back against the inclusion of such sanctions, which would likely include British territories such as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, which were implicated in the Paradise Papers. The British Government has previously said it does not believe it is fair to refer to its overseas territories as tax havens.

Sven Giegold, the European Parliament Green group’s finance spokesperson explained: “With its overseas territories, Great Britain dominates the map of tax havens. Britain is one of the world’s largest tax havens. Within the EU, the British government has for years been slowing down the EU’s fight against tax avoidance and money laundering. The British are particularly sceptical about the EU’s black list of tax havens, for self-protection. It takes a lot of British humour to understand that Caribbean islands with a corporate tax rate of zero per cent should not be tax havens, according to the EU definition. We must make best use of the Brexit negotiations to close the UK’s tax havens.”

British Green MEP Molly Scott Cato said: “Once again, the UK and its offshore territories are at the heart of things. This makes it all the more outrageous that the UK is among the countries blocking progress on the future EU blacklist.