The turning point in the fight against tax evasion?

06.05.2013

On the web-site of the UK Treasury was published the information about George Osborne`s speech, in which he expressed his satisfaction about the will of the British Overseas Territories authorities to begin fight against tax evasion. The fight will be in the fact that British offshore companies will share information on the holders of accounts in their banks.

Earlier the same decision about increasing transparency of banking business was made by Cayman Islands government (http://hbcomp.ru/about/news_and_mailings/news_jurisdictions/3597/), now group of other territories decides to follow they example - Anguilla, Bermuda Islands, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat and Turks and Caicos Islands. Those countries agreed with European Union about extending clarity of information in banking business. The same obligation was taken by Gibraltar, which has already signed a number of EU directives on the issue.

Therefore, most of the offshore territories will maintain two-way exchange of banking information with Great Britain and multilateral exchanges with the countries of the big five - France, Germany, Spain and Italy. We should mention, that the information would not be disclosed in full, but in consistent with the global policy of "limiting offshores", these territories committed to disclose information about the names, addresses, dates of birth, account numbers, account balances and payment details of bank`s clients.

Based on materials from:

https://www.gov.uk/government/announcements

Expert’s opinion

It’s hard to give a clear assessment of decisions, which were mentioned earlier.

On the one hand – these decisions looks absolutely right. On the other hand- complete inadequacy of performers on the issue. Also we can see the substitution of terms in our particular case.

Tax evasion – is a clear criminal offence!

The statement, that offshores commits tax evasion, lead us to the idea, that British Dominions are criminal countries. As we can understand, this idea and the statement are fundamentally wrong.

In turn, the exchange of information about holders of bank accounts can be dangerous only for criminals, who uses offshore accounts to accumulate money, proceeds from crime.

But this, of course, does not affect the law-abiding citizens who, in accordance with the laws of the British offshore and the legislation of their countries uses legally impeccable business schemes, and run their business and keep their money in offshore accounts.

Yaroslav Lomakin ( Managing partner of “Honest&Bright” company)