02/03/22

BARBADOS: Jurisdiction unhappy with OECD grey tax list.

As published on trinidadexpress.com, Wednesday 3 March, 2022.

Barbados is awaiting the visit of a delegation from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as the island continues to express its disappointment at being placed on the organisation’s grey list of countries considered un co-operative jurisdictions.

Energy and Business Development Minister, Kerrie Symmonds, speaking during the Appropriations Bill 2022, said the island still remains on the list through no fault of its own and that Bridgetown has made the required changes as requested.

Up to October last year, Anguilla, Barbados, Botswana, Costa Rica, Dominica, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Jordan, Malaysia, North Macedonia, Qatar, Seychelles, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay were placed on the OECD grey list.

The grey list, or state-of-play-document, includes jurisdictions that do not yet comply with all international tax standards but have made sufficient commitments to implement good governance principles.

Symmonds told legislators that Barbados is now awaiting the arrival of a team from the OECD’s Global Forum to do an onsite inspection, after which he expects the island to be removed from the grey list.

He said that the team was originally due to have arrived here in January but had the date had to be reviewed because of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

The grey list, or state-of-play-document, includes jurisdictions that do not yet comply with all international tax standards but have made sufficient commitments to implement good governance principles.

“I must say to you that we anticipated that we would by now have gone through the onsite inspection with respect to the OECD placing us on the grey list,” Symmonds said.

“I want to assure the public that everything that needed to have been done with respect to our domestic activity to make sure that whether it is at the Financial Services Commission, the Barbados Revenue Authority, or wherever else concerns would have been raised or red-flagged, we had done those things that we needed to do. All of the due diligence has been done.

What has not been done, however, is for the OECD’s Global Forum representatives to come here as they were anticipating to do in January of this year in order to do the onsite inspection. That onsite inspection, not having taken place, is now going to take place during the month of April, I believe April 11,” he added.

“Suffice to say they did not come because borders in France were closed due to Covid restrictions and I have indicated to the Director of International Business and he has in turn directed to the attention of the OECD, Barbados’ desire to dispense with this matter as quickly as possible”.

Symmonds said he had also asked to indicate Barbados’ “unhappiness that we are dealing in a virtual world and in a virtual space very often, but we still have to treat to a question of physical presence for an inspection which if it does not take place has serious consequences for the reputation of this country.

“And it cannot and will not be that Barbados’ reputation is tarnished as a result of inspectors not being able to come here because that is no fault of ours. The reputational hit, however, will be ours and that is a very candid conversation we have had to have with that level of authority,’ Symmonds told legislators. —CMC