You have to give it to the Americans – they don’t do things by half. In July, US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill derailed a decade-long initiative by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) to crack down on ‘harmful’ tax havens by distancing the US from the project.
In testimony to the US Congress, he attacked the OECD’s plans to impose sanctions on offshore jurisdictions – many of them in the Caribbean – whose tax practices were dubbed as ‘harmful’.
He said the US would seek bilateral treaties to share information with these tax havens – rather than join the OECD in pushing offshore centres into getting rid of their unpalatable tax regimes.
