France Removes Bermuda And Jersey From Tax Haven Blacklist

Stephen Little

2 January 2014

France has removed Bermuda and Jersey from its list of uncooperative tax havens for 2014 following increased efforts by the two offshore jurisdictions to improve transparency and international cooperation with other countries on tax matters.

Bermuda and Jersey were added to the blacklist in August 2013 as part of the French government's crackdown on tax evasion.

Countries that are on the blacklist face additional taxation on capital flows moving between them and France.

“Jersey and Bermuda have been informed that they will be removed from the list for 2014, which means that the retaliation measures provided for by law will not be applied,” said France's finance ministry.

The French Ministry for the Economy and Finance said that it had decided to remove the two jurisdictions from the blacklist as Jersey and Bermuda had both satisfied demands for tax information requested by the French government.

Last month, Bermuda and Jersey both signed an intergovernmental agreement to implement the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

Earlier this year, Jersey moved to the automatic exchange of information under the EU Savings Tax Directive, signing up to the G20 Action Plan and agreed to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance on Tax Matters. The island also signed up to the UK equivalent of the US FATCA agreement and joined the European Union G5 project on automatic exchange of information.