The ongoing threat to tax havens around the world continues
As we recently covered on the site, Switzerland and Jersey are two of the more high profile countries which have recently joined the fight against tax evasion around the world. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been very proactive in pressurising a number of recognised "tax havens" around the world to take on new regulations and new co-operation guidelines to effectively close a number of loop holes.
It is interesting to see that Monaco is the latest country to take on these new regulations which will see records made available for OECD members in the future. Tax evasion and tax havens in particular have been a major bugbear of Gordon Brown's over the years and he has been very proactive in the UK where a number of agreements have already been put in place. Slowly but surely the number of "safe" tax havens is reducing around the world and set to fall further if the OECD gets its way.
The situation could go one of two ways in that we could see all worldwide tax regulations brought in to unison although we could also see a new breed of tax haven created in some of the less regulatory challenged areas of the world. This is a high risk strategy by the OECD but one which in many ways they have no choice but to pursue.
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