EU last Tuesday decided to remove eight jurisdictions, including much-criticised Panama, from the list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions onto a “grey list”. The move is in line with recommendations by EU tax experts in the Code of Conduct Group.

As a result, just nine tax jurisdictions remain labelled as non-cooperative tax jurisdictions namely, American Samoa, Bahrain, Guam, Marshall Islands, Namibia, Palau, Saint Lucia, Samoa and Trinidad and Tobago. the EU Ministers have said that the delisting was a sign that the process was working as countries around the world were agreeing to adopt EU standards on tax transparency.

The Ministry of Strategy and Finance announced yesterday that the EU Economic and Financial Committee had decided to remove South Korea from its “tax haven blacklist” after the revision of tax system this year by the administration, which pledged to improve and supplement its tax support system for foreign-invested companies to bring it in line with global standards.