Panama joined by Costa Rica  on EU black list

The European Union (EU) has decided to keep Panama on its list of jurisdictions that do not cooperate in tax matters with the bloc and has added       Costa Rica and  Russia. The information was collected during the meeting held by the Council of the European Union (CUE), where it decided to include Costa Rica, Russia, the British Virgin Islands, and the Marshall Islands to the list, joining American Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Trinidad and Tobago, Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, Vanuatu, Bahamas, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands.  

Costa Rica enters for the first time since it was created in 2017, since “it has not fulfilled” its commitments to abolish or modify certain aspects of its exception regime for foreign sources of income considered harmful. In the case of Russia, they have verified that new legislation adopted in 2022 does not respect Moscow’s commitment to addressing the harmful parts of its regime for international holding companies in accordance with international criteria, which is added to the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Since October 2022, Panama has remained on the EU’s discriminatory list. In the last review in February of that year, the Council pointed out in its conclusions that Panama had not met international criteria on transparency and exchange of tax information and has a regime of exemption for income from abroad considered harmful by the EU. The EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes was established in December 2017. It is part of the EU’s external tax strategy and aims to contribute to ongoing efforts to promote good tax governance across the globe.