Earlier today, the Council of the European Union (EU) removed Barbados from the EU's list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes.
In October 2020, Barbados was added to the list and deemed to be "Partially Compliant". At the time, Minister of International Business, Hon. Ronald Toppin assured that his ministry was doing all it could, including providing progress reports to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) every two weeks from the Barbados Revenue Authority and International Business Unit, to ensure a "Largely Compliant" rating of the country within the shortest possible time-frame.
Back then, Minister Toppin noted that Barbados had made great strides to step up from the OECD's "Partially Compliant" rating. He made mention of the correspondence from the EU's Code of Conduct Group in July [2020], which acknowledged in part, "...the progress made in many areas since the last peer review and welcome the spirit of cooperation with which you (Barbados) are approaching this."
Barbados has since been granted a supplementary review by the Global Forum, resulting in the jurisdiction's transfer to a state of play document (Annex II of the Council conclusions – which identifies those countries that do not yet comply with all international tax standards but which have made significant commitments to reform their tax policies) pending the outcome of the review. Besides Barbados the other countries within this category are Australia, Botswana, Eswatini, Jamaica, Jordan, Maldives, Thailand and Turkey.
The EU's list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes comprises jurisdictions globally, which have not engaged in a constructive dialogue with the EU on tax governance or those that have failed to deliver on their commitments to implement the reforms necessary to comply with a set of objective tax good governance criteria.
