Thursday, July 08, 2010OECD Praises BVI

Phillip Morton, Investors Offshore.comOECD Praises BVI's Transparency Efforts

The British Virgin Islands has welcomed the Organization for Economic and Cooperation Development’s recognition of the jurisdiction's achievements in meeting and surpassing its international Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) guidelines.

Commenting on the progress report, Sherri Ortiz, Executive Director of the British Virgin Islands International Finance Centre, said that the BVI has long been committed to effectively exchanging tax information having signed its first TIEA with the United States in 2002.

"As part of a continuing process we have signed 17 TIEAs including with United Kingdom, Australia and France, and we have contacted every OECD country to initiate TIEA discussions. We expect to conclude further TIEA negotiations in the coming months,” she said, adding:

“As the OECD recognizes in its briefing entitled ‘Promoting Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes,’ the BVI has played a key role in promoting these standards as a member of the Peer Review Group of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information.”

“We welcome the OECD’s Peer Review process, due to take place for the BVI in early 2011, and believe that we are well placed to meet and exceed the review requirements.”

The first set of peer reviews were launched on March 1, 2010. They cover a first group of 18 jurisdictions: Australia, Barbados, Bermuda, Botswana, Canada, Cayman Islands, Denmark, Germany, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Jersey, Mauritius, Monaco, Norway, Panama, Qatar, Trinidad & Tobago. These reviews are to be discussed at the next Peer Review Meeting on July 20-22, 2010, in the Bahamas and should be adopted at the Global Forum Meeting on September 29-30, 2010, in Singapore. The reviews are a first step in a three-year process approved in February by the Global Forum in response to the call by G20 leaders at their Pittsburgh Summit in September 2009 for improved tax transparency and exchange of information. A second set of twenty reviews will be launched shortly.

All members of the Global Forum, as well as jurisdictions identified by the Global Forum as relevant to its work, are to undergo reviews of the implementation of their systems for the exchange of information in tax matters. This will take place in two phases. Phase 1 reviews will assess the quality of a jurisdiction’s legal and regulatory framework for the exchange of information, while Phase 2 will look at practical operation of that framework. All jurisdictions will undergo Phase 1 reviews before June 2012 and all Phase 2 reviews should be completed before June 2014.

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