Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

According to the OECD, advances are being achieved in bringing greater transparency to financial centres around the world, but progress on exchange of information on tax issues is more limited, according to OECD’s latest report on its drive to bring more fairness to cross-border tax co-operation.
Significant restrictions on access to bank information for tax purposes remain in three OECD countries – Austria, Luxembourg and Switzerland – and in a number of offshore financial centres, including Liechtenstein, Panama and Singapore. Further, a number of offshore financial centres that committed to implement the standards on transparency and the effective exchange of information developed by the OECD’s Global Forum on Taxation have failed to follow through.

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Eric Woerth is willing to organise whith his german colleague Peer Steinbrück a meeting with OECD members in October or November about tax havens.
He stated that a tax haven is like a paradis fiscal acts like a poacher that go without legislation to the groundà of someone who abide by the law."
He added that he is willing to go much farther in the control of tax havens and that the responsibility if up to the international community.

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European Commission issues first report on implementation of savings taxation Directive.
There is an interesting difference between the french version and the english version on a critical issue. The word “fraude” in French, which means ‘fraud” in english is translated by “evasion” in the English text.
Jurisdictions that have banking secrey rules and tax advantages underline the difference between tax evasion and tax fraud to justify their legal framework.




A selective application of the "look through" approach could, however, be considered for payments to specific categories of legal entities and arrangements established in targeted jurisdictions outside the EU, likely to be used for tax evasion by EU resident beneficial owners. A list of those jurisdictions and their relevant entities and arrangements would then have to be annexed to the Directive.

Une application sélective de l’approche «par transparence» pourrait toutefois être envisagée pour les paiements en faveur de certaines catégories spécifiques de personnes morales et constructions juridiques établies dans des juridictions ciblées, situées en dehors de l’Union européenne, susceptibles d’être utilisées à des fins de fraude fiscale par les bénéficiaires effectifs résidant dans l’Union. Dans ce cas, il conviendrait d’annexer à la directive une liste de ces juridictions et des personnes morales et constructions concernées



Recent cases of tax evasion, involving non-EU countries already cooperating with the EU on taxation of savings, have shown that, where the “paying agent upon receipt” concept is not consistently implemented, room is left for abuse and distortions

Des cas récents de fraude fiscale, impliquant des pays tiers coopérant déjà avec l’Union européenne dans le domaine de la fiscalité de l’épargne, ont montré qu’une application incohérente de la notion d’«agent payeur à la réception» ouvre la porte à des abus et à des distorsions de concurrence.


English text
French text