Dutch Create Wider Tax Jurisdiction "Blacklist"

Tom Burroughes

3 January 2019

In a move likely to prompt anger from a number of jurisdictions, the Netherlands government has created its own list of countries it claims are not doing enough to fight tax avoidance.

The Dutch list contains five jurisdictions that are already blacklisted by the European Union , media reports said.

"By drawing up its own stringent blacklist, the Netherlands is once again showing that it is serious in its fight against tax avoidance," State Secretary for Finance Menno Snel said in a press release. "And that's just one of the steps we're taking", he was quoted by various media outlets as saying.

Such "blacklists" can lead to charges of hypocrisy, as many "offshore" jurisdictions argue that they are more, at least no less, compliant with tax rules than supposedly "onshore" jurisdictions. Within the EU, of which the Netherlands is a member, jurisdictions such as Luxembourg, Malta and Cyprus have been criticised for their practices. More widely, while the Common Reporting Standard accord encourages dozens of countries to swap data to go after alleged miscreants, the US - the world's largest economy - is not a signatory to the CRS, and yet a number of its states are arguably opaque.

The coverage of this issue also highlights how the dividing line between evasion, which is typically illegal, and avoidance, which is not, is being blurred.