G20 summit agrees tax haven crackdown

World leaders at yesterday’s G20 summit agreed to take action against
uncooperative tax havens and backed plans for global accounting rules.

A G20 communique announced an agreement to take action against
non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens, proclaiming that the ‘era
of banking secrecy is over.’

Yesterday the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development put
Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay on its blacklist of
non-cooperative tax havens, as part of an international crackdown on tax
evasion.

A separate ‘grey list’ of countries that have agreed to improve transparency
standards but have not yet signed the necessary international accords included
Liechtenstein, Monaco and Switzerland, the OECD said.

The G20 summit also announced a new Financial Stability Board (FSB),
including all G20 countries, Spain, and the European Commission. The FSB
Will work with the International Monetary Fund to provide ‘early warnings of
macroeconomic and financial risks and the actions needed to address them,’ the
communique said.

The communique also expressed support for global accounting standards, urging

accounting standard setters to ‘work urgently with supervisors and regulators to
improve standards on valuation and provisioning and achieve a single set of
high-quality global accounting standards.’

Further reading:

G20
communique

OECD
progress report on tax havens