Panama poised to avoid new tax haven list

PANAMA  is poised to prevent its name from appearing on a new of list of tax havens prepared by  the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Fevelopment (OECD.

The OECD  battle against tax evasion is under the mandate of a G-20, forum bringing together the world’s most industrialized countries and an emerging group.

This week Panama received the qualification of “broadly fulfilling OECD   requirements for transparency and tax Information exchange.

To not appear on the list Panama has to have a wide network of countries with which to exchange financial information and the commitment to exchange information automatically from 2018. When asked if an appearance in the new G-20 list is ruled out, the Minister of Economy and Finance, Dulcidio De La Guardia,  told La Prensa  that “each country is sovereign to make its lists as well as Panama. We cannot make inferences about what a group or a country can do. The responsibility of Panama was to make the corresponding changes and the international community has recognized it. The recognition of the OECD Global Forum will be a very important input into the G-20 decision on which countries are cooperators or not on issues of fiscal and financial transparency “.

The Global Forum evaluated the standards and effective compliance of Panama in the exchange of financial information upon request. One of the international community’s concerns

was the lack of cooperation with other countries when they required information in the framework of An investigation for tax evasion. France was one of the countries that claimed the lack of compliance by  Panama when the European country required of information about its taxpayers.

Last November, Panama was rated as “non-compliant” by the Global Forum review. At that time, Panamanian officials said that the analysis had been done over a period of time prior to the reforms implemented in the last two years. That is why a Fast Track review was requested , which is equally exhaustive but of shorter duration. The content of the evaluation has not been published, but the qualification of “widely

Achieved ” has been announced. The OECD notes in a statement that in the last 15 months the changes implemented

By jurisdictions have led to 17 upgrades in grades. Panama is one of the three countries that have moved from

From “non-compliant” to “broadly compliant”, although the qualification is provisional.