Channel Islands Brussels Office (CIBO)
EU Finance Ministers (ECOFIN) today confirmed that Guernsey and Jersey are cooperative jurisdictions with respect to tax good governance. ECOFIN endorsed the assessment of the European Commission and the EU’s Code of Conduct Group on Business Taxation (CoCG) that Guernsey and Jersey had met their commitments to address concerns raised by the EU in 2017 in relation to legal economic substance requirements.
As
background, in December 2017 ECOFIN had placed Guernsey and Jersey, along with
over 60 other jurisdictions, in “Annex II”. This meant that Guernsey and Jersey
had been assessed as cooperative, but subject to the implementation by the end
of 2018 of commitments made to the CoCG. In Guernsey and Jersey’s case, those
commitments related to concerns identified by the CoCG about the possibility
that profits from relevant activities could be registered in Guernsey or Jersey
without adequate economic activity taking place in the island. ECOFIN today
confirmed that Guernsey and Jersey had delivered on their commitments and
accordingly decided to remove both islands from Annex II (effectively
“whitelisted”), together with 23 other jurisdictions.
Further details can
be found in the following links:
