Reuters says Britain has turned up the pressure on other rich economies to clamp down on secretive money flows at the upcoming G8 Summit in Ireland by pressing its overseas tax havens into a transparency deal and announcing new disclosure rules for British firms. Reuters said Prime Minister David Cameron wants to make progress on closing global tax loopholes when he hosts a meeting of leaders of the G8 economies in Northern Ireland on Mon 17.6.2013 and Tue 18.6.2013.
“It is important we are getting our house in order,” Cameron said in a speech in London on 15 June 2013 after representatives of overseas tax havens linked to Britain agreed to sign up to an international transparency protocol. Ten territories and self-governing regions will join the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Assistance in Tax Matters which has been agreed by more than 50 countries. They also pledged to produce plans on how to provide more information on the ownership of so-called shell companies. Those included in the agreement were Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. The convention will help developing countries trying to trace money they suspect belongs in their state coffers, to request tax information from offshore centres.
Also on 15 June 2013, the British Government said it would introduce new domestic rules to combat tax evasion and money laundering, by forcing shadowy “shell” companies to throw off their cloak of anonymity and reveal who really runs them. Under the new British rules, companies will be required to obtain and hold information on their ownership and control which will then be held in a central registry, available to police and revenue agencies. Chancellor George Osborne said it was essential that British law enforcement and tax authorities had access to information about the ultimate owners of companies, and it was time for others to act.
[LTN 114, 17/6/13]