The government of the Cayman Islands,
which like other international financial centres has been under pressure for
its so-called tax haven status, has vowed to join a multi-lateral pact on assisting other
jurisdictions on tax, as well as to publish action plans on the vexed issue of
beneficial ownership of trusts and other structures.

Officials from the government met UK
prime minister David Cameron at the weekend ahead of the Group of Eight meeting
in Northern Ireland.
The issue of tax evasion, and the role of IFCs, has been widely commented upon
ahead of the meeting.

The Cayman Islands, along with jurisdictions such as the
British Virgin Islands, Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man,
have for long insisted that they are becoming more transparent as jurisdictions
and in fact, in some ways superior to “onshore” locations.

“We warmly welcome our meeting with the Prime Minister [Cameron]
today to discuss tax, trade and transparency, where we had a very constructive
exchange of views on the practical steps needed to tackle the global problem of
tax evasion,” the Ministry for Financial Services, at the Cayman Islands
Government, said in a statement.

The jurisdiction said it agreed three steps:

- To play an active part in the new pilot initiative of
multilateral automatic tax information exchange launched by the UK, France,
Germany, Italy and Spain;

- To publish national action plans on beneficial ownership; and

- To commit to joining the Multilateral Convention on
Mutual Administrative Assistance on Tax Matters.

The issue of disclosing beneficial owners of structures such
as offshore trusts is difficult. At a recent conference in London
hosted by Jersey Finance, the promotional agency for Jersey’s
financial sector, speakers argued that disclosure of such ownership could
compromise legitimate client confidentiality and put some wealthy individuals
and their families at risk.

The Cayman Islands
government statement struck a positive tone in how it intended to promote
co-operations with other jurisdictions.

“As part of our continuing commitment to tackling tax
evasion and fraud, we have also undertaken to publish action plans, at the same
time as those G8 countries publishing plans in Lough Erne, setting out the
concrete steps, where needed, to fully implement the Financial Action Task
Force standards to further increase transparency on beneficial ownership
information and to ensure that this information is freely available to law enforcement
and tax authorities,” the statement said.