The Bahamas has been removed from the European Union’s list of non cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes.
Minister of Economic Affairs, Sen. Hon. Michael Halkitis spoke with ZNS News about the achievement. “The Bahamas is an international, leading, premiere financial center committed to following best practices and adhering to international standards.”
Senator Halkitis also addressed the fairness of the European Union’s system of compliance saying, “we celebrate but at the same time we don’t believe that it is a fair system. We do believe that there’s not a full understanding of what we do here but it is what it is. And so while we work to ensure that we get a system that will hear the voices of the all the jurisdictions that are impacted, i.e. the United Nations as an arbiter, we still celebrate because we know it will make our lives easier.”
The Minister added, “while we do have an OECD and an EU forum on harmful tax practice that looks at these things and make these designation if we have that fully equipped monitoring mechanism designation its like a certification to say that we have very, very thorough and comprehensive compliance regime in place in The Bahamas.”
