The government of Hong Kong argues that there is little risk that the Asian jurisdiction will be placed on a blacklist of so-called tax havens by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, according to Tax-News.com.

Professor KC Chan, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, is quoted saying that in an article published in May 2009, the director of the OECD's Centre for Tax Policy and Administration had praised Hong Kong's efforts to comply with the international standards on tax transparency and exchange of information. He also said that in September last year, the OECD confirmed that Hong Kong is not a tax haven and recognised its commitments to the OECD standards.

The comments follow reports in March this year that the US Internal Revenue Service, the tax authority, was turning its guns on Hong Kong after having partially broken the historic bank secrecy of Switzerland in its hunt for alleged tax dodgers.

The OECD represents 30 of the world’s major industrial nations. The Paris-based group has sought to spell out standards on co-operation between states on exchanging information that will block tax evasion. Hong Kong is not yet on the “white list” of jurisdictions deemed by the OECD that have, in its own terms, “substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard”.

In the report, Chan is quoted as saying that since 1998, the government has been seeking to conclude comprehensive agreements for the avoidance of double taxation with Hong Kong’s major trading partners. In the past, a major obstacle to their conclusion was that Hong Kong could not adopt the OECD’s agreed standard for the exchange of information, due to the legal constraint on the information gathering powers of the Inland Revenue Department.