Following the G20 meeting on 2 April and communiqué, the OECD has published a list of countries surveyed in accordance with the international standard for exchange of tax information. Both Ireland and the United Kingdom feature favourably – other locations considerably less so.

Following the G20 meeting in London on 2 April, the leaders issued a Declaration, Strengthening the Financial System.

The interaction of tax with the financial system was specifically noted in the official communiqué:

“to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens. We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information.”

Following the G20 meeting and communiqué, the OECD Secretariat has provided a detailed report on progress by financial centres around the world towards the implementation of an internationally agreed standard on exchange of information for tax purposes.

The Report lists all countries that have been surveyed by the OECD Global Forum in implementing the internationally agreed tax standard. Both Ireland and the UK are identified as jurisdictions that have “substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard” and are thus in the good books, as might be expected. At the other end of the scale, Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay are noted as not having committed to the internationally agreed tax standard. The day after the publication of the list, Uruguay gave a formal endorsement of its tax information exchange standards.

A further thirty or so countries, which were identified in 2000 as meeting the tax haven criteria as described in the 1998 OECD report, and financial centres have now committed to the internationally agreed tax standard, but have not yet substantially implemented those standards.

The list of countries is available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/38/14/42497950.pdf.