Antilles must be taken off the black lists

August 12, 2008 6:09 AM

State Secretary Alex Rosaria (Finance, PNP) urges Taxation and Customs Union Directorate-General (Taxud) of the European Union to take the Antilles off the list of tax-paradises as soon as possible. Rosaria considers it wrongfully that the EU-countries Poland, Italy, Portugal, and Greece still have the Antilles on these so-called black lists.

Rosaria has already substantiated at Taxud in The Hague that the Antilles comply with all the rules and guidelines of the Economic Cooperation and Development Organization (OESO) regarding taxes. He’s now lending more weight to his plea by referring to the agreement that the Antilles have entered with Spain on July 10 last for the exchange of fiscal information.

“Spain investigated our legislation for four years and found nothing that obstructs this treaty. This will soon be followed up with a treaty to prevent double taxation (DTA)”, said Rosaria. “Spain would have never started this if the Antilles was a tax-paradise.” In their strive to belong to the 10 best centers for international financial service, The Antilles do not have time to constantly spend four years convincing the above-mentioned EU-countries that the local tax-law is responsible and modern.

“I expect the EU to be an honest and level playing field. The Netherlands Antilles collaborate with the EU on all sorts of tax areas. It’s their turn now to straighten up the situation and make sure that also the future EU-countries won’t do this to the Antilles.”

Rosaria points out that if the criterion that OESO maintains to designate a country as ‘tax paradise’ would be applied to all OESO-countries, then also the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, and even the United States can be designated as tax paradises. But the OESO won’t label her own members unfavourably.

(Source: National Newspaper Amigoe)

August 11, 2008