CIFSA responds regarding OECD’s “Grey” List
The Cayman Islands Financial Services Association has denounced the OECD’s decision to include the Cayman Islands into its “grey” list despite its obvious commitment to the OECD standard.
The CIFSA has expressed its disappointment to see the Cayman’s inclusion in the OECD grey list as it had previously hoped that “the OECD would undertake a rational objective analysis of the tax transparency established by the Cayman Islands over the past decade”. According to CIFSA’s announcement, “In reverting to its political origins, the OECD has not improved its credibility and indeed in acting in an arbitrary and prejudicial manner raises questions about the value that is attributed by the G20 to the cooperation in tax and criminal matters that the Cayman Islands has demonstrated.”
The CIFSA claimed that the jurisdiction has full and relevant tax transparency not only with the USA under the November 2001 Tax Information Exchange Agreement but also “proactive reporting with 27 European Union nations under the 2005 European Union Savings Tax Directive, the figures for which, not incidentally, show monetarily and fiscally insignificant deposits by European residents in the Cayman Islands”.
The Cayman Islands Financial Services Association stated, “However we are encouraged to see that the OECD has now set an objective test for positioning on the ‘white’ list which is less than the total number of tax exchange arrangements that the Cayman Islands currently has in place. Accordingly, since the Cayman Islands government has throughout maintained its commitment to execution of further bilateral treaties, assuming its approaches are met in good faith, we anticipate that the OECD will be obliged to remove Cayman from its current list swiftly.”