Barbados has been removed from EU blacklist

Barbados has been removed from the European Union (EU) list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes, the European Council announced Monday.

Dominica has however been added to the blacklist.

In a statement the EU group said: “The Council today adopted conclusions on the revised EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes, deciding to add Dominica to the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions (Annex I of the conclusions) and to remove Barbados from that list.”

Barbados was added to the EU list in October 2020 after it received a ‘partially compliant’ rating from the Global Forum.

The council explained: “ It [Barbados ] has now been granted a supplementary review by the Global Forum and has therefore been moved to a state-of-play document (Annex II of the Council conclusions) pending the outcome of this review.”

The Ministry of International Business and Industry had requested the supplementary review on the grounds that deficiencies identified by the EU had been addressed.

The EU council said Dominica has been included in the list as it received a ‘partially compliant’ rating from the Global Forum and has not yet resolved this issue.

Other Caribbean countries on the list are Trinidad and Tobago and Anguilla.

The list includes jurisdictions worldwide that either have not engaged in a constructive dialogue with the EU on tax governance or have failed to deliver on their commitments to implement the reforms necessary to comply with a set of objective tax good governance criteria. These criteria relate to tax transparency, fair taxation and implementation of international standards designed to prevent tax base erosion and profit shifting, the EU said.