The Isle of Man Government has further demonstrated its commitment to international transparency and information exchange standards by delivering a training workshop for two British Overseas Territories.
The four-day course was organised to assist the Governments of Montserrat and Anguilla fulfil their international obligations on tax information exchange.
Funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Isle of Man international information exchange experts David Griffin and Colin Goodwin delivered a series of tailored training sessions to a group of tax, legal and financial officers from the two islands.
Montserrat and Anguilla are entering into Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) with other countries to meet evolving international standards in a new era of transparency championed by the OECD.
The workshop in Montserrat covered a range of important issues, including assessing the validity of incoming TIEA and mutual legal assistance requests, managing the exchange process, and handling appeals and challenges.
During the event Mr Griffin, a legal officer at the Attorney General’s Chambers, and Mr Goodwin, Deputy Assessor of Income Tax, were able to share knowledge and experience gained from more than a decade of dealing with information exchange under the Island’s international tax agreements and mutual legal assistance requests.
The Isle of Man has a long-standing commitment to international standards of tax transparency and exchange of information, and was involved in the OECD subgroup which developed the 2002 OECD model tax information exchange agreement.
Since then, the Island has remained at the forefront of efforts to put in place tax co-operation agreements, signing 25 TIEAs and 4 double taxation agreements.
Mr Griffin said: ‘The Isle of Man is one of the few countries in the world that offers bespoke training around TIEAs and mutual legal assistance. We are regarded as a world leader in this field, and Colin and I have previously conducted workshops for the Nordic countries. We had a very enthusiastic response from the participants in Montserrat and the feedback received shows the event was a great success.’
The Isle of Man’s robust tax regulation has been recognised by a number of international bodies, including the G20, OECD and IMF. The OECD recently confirmed that the Island is one of only eight reviewed jurisdictions found to have all elements of effective information exchange in place.
Mr Goodwin said: ‘As a mature and responsible nation, the Isle of Man takes its international obligations very seriously indeed. We have a large network of TIEAs in place and welcome the opportunity to work with our TIEA partners and other countries to develop and promote best practice in information exchange.’
