18/11/19

PANAMA: Rated 'Partially Compliant' by Global Forum on Tax Transparency.

As published on oecd.org, Tuesday November 12, 2019.

12/11/2019 - The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (the Global Forum) published today eight peer review reports assessing compliance with the international standard on transparency and exchange of information on request (EOIR).

These reports are part of the second round of Global Forum reviews, which assess jurisdictions against the updated standard, which requires beneficial ownership information of all relevant legal entities and arrangements, in line with the definition used by the Financial Action Task Force Recommendations.

Six jurisdictions – Andorra, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Marshall Islands, Samoa and the United Arab Emirates – demonstrated progress in implementation of the standard and received an overall rating of "Largely Compliant". These jurisdictions have demonstrated progress on the deficiencies identified in the first round of reviews, including improving access to information, developing broader EOI agreement networks, monitoring the handling of increasing incoming EOI requests. Saudi Arabia maintained its overall rating of Largely Compliant. These new reports also issue new recommendations, in particular towards improving the measures related to the availability of beneficial ownership of relevant entities and arrangements, as required in the strengthened standard.

Panama was rated overall "Partially Compliant" with the standard as challenges remain, in particular to ensure the availability of accounting information. Panama should also strengthen its supervisory programmes to ensure these types of information are kept in practice.

The Global Forum, which will be celebrating its 10th year anniversary on 26 and 27 November in Paris, is the leading multilateral body mandated to ensure that jurisdictions around the world adhere to and effectively implement both the standard of transparency and exchange of information on request and the standard of automatic exchange of financial account information. This objective is achieved through a robust monitoring and peer review process. The Global Forum also runs an extensive technical assistance programme to provide support to its members in implementing the standards and helping tax authorities to make the best use of cross-border information sharing channels.