GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert will be in Paris to­day to sign a treaty to en­hance glob­al tax co­op­er­a­tion and with the hopes of T&T be­ing re­moved from the EU tax black­list.

He made the an­nounce­ment while speak­ing at a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence held yes­ter­day dur­ing which he spoke about his trip to sign the Mul­ti­lat­er­al Con­ven­tion on Mu­tu­al Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­sis­tance in Tax Mat­ters. The con­ven­tion was de­vel­oped joint­ly by the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co­op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) and the Coun­cil of Eu­rope.

"So for the last sev­er­al years we have asked the OECD—which is where the Glob­al Fo­rum is lo­cat­ed, the glob­al fo­rum is a de­part­ment with­in the OECD in Paris—to al­low us to sign this treaty be­cause once you sign this treaty, then you can have tax shar­ing arrange­ments with all of the coun­tries that are mem­bers of that. They have not al­lowed us to sign this be­fore be­cause they said we were not ready as our laws were not up to stan­dard," Im­bert ex­plained.

Im­bert added that he will then head to the EU head­quar­ters in Brus­sel the fol­low­ing day to re­quest that T&T be moved from the black­list to a “grey list” which recog­nis­es that progress is be­ing made.

"The EU has two lists. A black list which is the more se­vere one, and the grey list which recog­nise that you are mak­ing progress to­wards com­ing off the list and then you come com­plete­ly off the list.

"So I  am go­ing to EU head­quar­ters in Brus­sels the fol­low­ing day to meet with EU of­fi­cials to show them I have just signed the treaty with the glob­al fo­rum and we would now like to be put on the EU grey list which again will be sig­nif­i­cant progress," the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance fur­ther ex­plained.

The EU list of non-co­op­er­a­tive ju­ris­dic­tions for tax pur­pos­es is part of the EU’s work to fight tax eva­sion and avoid­ance.