On Tuesday 8 November, the finance ministers of the member states of the EU agreed on a raft of criteria to define a tax haven, but the sensitivity of certain member states over the tax rate ended up winning out and the text was softened somewhat as a consequence.
At this meeting of the Ecofin Council, the ministers discussed the creation of a European blacklist of tax havens over breakfast. The ball was then returned to the experts' court. The ministers resumed work on the dossier towards the end of the working session.
As regards transparency (exchange of information), one question was still open at the start of the ministerial meeting: will meeting just two of the three qualifying criteria allow a jurisdiction to avoid being included on the list? The OECD approach consists of stating that meeting two of these criteria is enough. According to a number of sources, the UK expressed concern at the fact that, if all three criteria had to be met, the United States would automatically be blacklisted, which would be unacceptable. The compromise struck is that it will be enough to meet two criteria until the end of June 2019 (rather than December, as before).
On the criteria related to tax fairness, countries will be blacklisted if they operate harmful tax regimes and facilitate offshore structures aiming to attract profits that do not reflect actual economic activity. The reference to a rate of zero or close to zero has been withdrawn, with one nuance: the code of conduct group will be tasked with evaluating the absence of a corporate taxation system or the application of a nominal rate of zero or almost zero as a possible indicator likely to facilitate offshore structures. Letters will be sent out to the jurisdictions to be put under European scrutiny by January 2017, with an adequate level of transparency in this process to be assured. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)