Taxation: Anguilla, The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands added to EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes

The EU continues to promote fair tax competition and address harmful tax practices. The Council yesterday (5 October 2022) decided to add Anguilla, The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands to the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes. With these additions, the EU list now consists of 12 jurisdictions:

• American Samoa
• Anguilla
• The Bahamas
• Fiji
• Guam
• Palau
• Panama
• Samoa
• Trinidad and Tobago
• Turks and Caicos Islands
• US Virgin Islands
• Vanuatu

The Council regrets that these jurisdictions are non-cooperative on tax matters and invites them to engage with the EU’s Code of Conduct Group in order to resolve the identified issues.

The reason for the inclusion of Anguilla, The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands in the list is that there are concerns that these three jurisdictions, which all have a zero or nominal only rate of corporate income tax, are attracting profits without real economic activity (criterion 2.2 of the EU list).

In particular, they failed to adequately address a number of recommendations of the OECD Forum on Harmful Tax Practices (FHTP) in connection to the enforcement of economic substance requirements, something to which they committed earlier this year