Speaking at a Franco-German conference in Paris in October on the topic of “The fight against international tax evasion and avoidance”, OECD Secretary General Gurria took the opportunity of listing OECD sponsored measures to combat evasion.

Parking for the moment the observation that sovereign governments do their economies and their tax systems little good by lumping (legitimate) avoidance and (illegal) evasion together in the same basket, the Secretary General mentioned the following initiatives:

• In 2000 the OECD identified over 40 tax havens; and between 2000 and 2005 it claims to have convinced 35 of these to commit to the OECD standards of transparency and exchange of information
• The OECD launched a parallel project eight years ago to improve access to banking information for tax authorities within the OECD membership

The Secretary General did point out that “at least half a dozen OECD countries have put comprehensive offshore compliance strategies in place, including strong incentives for voluntary compliance.” The Irish and UK strategies came in for particular praise, possibly a reference to the Irish Offshore Assets Investigation and the UK “Offshore Disclosure Arrangements”.