Government ignores OECD in formulating list of West European tax havens

The government’s long-expected regulations concerning tax havens were released on Jan.1, 2001, and created utter astonishment with a list including, apart from plenty of expected Caribbean and Pacific islands, such countries as Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary and Luxembourg. These European countries, according to Finance Ministry, use unfair tax policies in administrative, financial and other non-material services. As a result the ministry will control all transactions in these sectors with these countries. According to Robert Zukowski of Ernst & Young, the ministry ignored not only OECD orders to wait for the organization’s own list of tax paradises before creating its own, but also a request to avoid accusing its members of being havens until the end of a transitional period (April 2003). (Puls Biznesu, pp.1,2,5) M.K