‘EU got it wrong’
INDEPENDENT Senator, Dr. Sir Trevor Carmichael, believes that the recent blacklisting of Barbados by the European Union was unwarranted and is hopeful that the island will be removed from that list.
He was speaking in the Upper Chamber yesterday where he said he was troubled by Barbados being listed as a non-cooperative tax jurisdiction.
“I am not generally one to come out and be vehemently opposed to something. But I can say this. This was a bit of a disaster. Not for Barbados. We in Barbados and we who are guardians of the IBS will make sure that it is not a disaster, but the quality of listing in my view had elements of a disaster,” he lamented.
It was further noted that while the country may have challenges in other sectors, the International Business Sector is one in which everyone on all sides of the divide are committed to seeing succeed.
Sir Trevor recalled that Barbados has been put on this list twice before, first in the 1990s, then the 2000s and queried why none of the dependencies such as the Cayman, Bermuda, BVI, Anguilla are listed. “And I am not suggesting that they should be listed. I am saying let’s have some consistency,” he asserted.
“I am sure on this occasion we will come off again. Because I can only think that the EU in doing this did it hastily. I will always try to give the best view of things. I think they did it hastily and I think that they have recognised that an error has been made and I think that they will seek to do the honourable thing and to take us off the list,” he stated.
“We don’t need an apology... Just take us off the list. Because this is a jurisdiction of probity in its International Business. This is a jurisdiction which international business practitioners across the world recognise as the leading small state in international business. That is how we are seen,” he said.
Sir Trevor made the point that Barbados has complied with everything asked for by the EU and things have been going well in recent years.
“Indeed the one thing that the Union has asked for, which Barbados only as recently as the end of November, was the change to the fiscal incentives legislation,” he noted.
“The fiscal incentives legislation, God bless its origins is a piece of legislation which has helped Barbados in the past significantly, especially in terms of all the persons who brought businesses in those industrial estates and helped us in our industrialisation process. The fiscal incentives legislation in my view was possibly the most transparent piece of development legislation you could find. It was part of the old development model which Sir Arthur Lewis had promulgated,” he added.
“The fiscal incentives legislation which the EU is so concerned about now is a piece of legislation which has not only been used but it is not even used. Very few companies are actually using it. So we could take it off of the books and I understand that the Government has agreed to do that, and suffer no harm,” it was stated.
He stressed this legislation is not harmful as it relates to tax practices. “Because you have a piece of legislation which individuals are investing funds in a sovereign country and taking the risk of doing business in that country in a transparent manner, albeit that they are not paying taxes but they do pay other taxes. They have employees, they buy things. So as they say in the popular parlance, ‘Give me a break,’” he said.
“It is clearly a case of not understanding or not going to the trouble of understanding how the regime has worked.”
“So I just wanted to indicate that this listing is very unfortunate. It is very unfortunate because it comes at a time when Barbados has continued to expand its treaty framework. Its Double Taxation Agreements. The number keeps growing. We have ten treaties within the EU itself. Forget all of the other ones that we have in South America, in Cuba, North America,” Sir Trevor pointed out.
Senator Carmichael reminded the Honourable Chamber that this year an International Arbitration Centre was launched. “And let me say this, we launched that in November and since then I can assure you we are getting telephone calls from so many important tax practitioners …and international practitioners engaged in arbitration, in litigation and conciliation who are saying, ‘we are so delighted at what you are doing, we will make sure that we use Barbados as a venue when we have matters of this kind’. We will do that because you have a solid reputation of integrity,” he said. (JH)