A SECOND draft anti-tax haven bill filed in the United States Senate could be more favourable to Jersey’s offshore finance sector, says a senior lawyer.
As reported briefly on Friday, Senator Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, last week filed an alternative to the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Bill filed by Senator Carl Levin last year. The Levin bill, which has been backed publicly by US President Barack Obama, would include a blacklist of ‘offshore secrecy jurisdictions’, including Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man.
This blacklisting does not take into account the Tax Information Exchange Agreement signed by the Jersey and US authorities in 2003 or the number of TIEAs signed since then with various other OECD member countries, most recently the United Kingdom.
The Baucus proposal does not include a black list, although it puts forward some strong measures and additional powers to the American tax authorities.
Jersey-based barrister Stephen Platt (pictured) said that the Washington administration intended to act against offshore tax havens but there was no consensus among policy makers at the moment.
