The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) has attracted high levels of criticism as a result of initiatives supporting high-tax policies which would have the effect of reducing competition among national taxation authorities.
During the past three years the OECD has demanded undertakings from the world’s offshore jurisdictions to dismantle corporate structures regarded by the OECD as constituting harmful tax competition. In 1998 the OECD published its report entitled Harmful Tax Competition: An Emerging Global Issue. In subsequent releases the OECD identified 47 potentially harmful tax regimes and listed 35 jurisdictions as putative tax havens.
