(Finance) – the EU Council, which met today with the European Affairs ministers of the 27, has removed Bahamas, Belize, Seychelles and Turks and Caicos Islands from the list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes.
With these updates, the EU blacklist includes 12 jurisdictions: SaAmerican moas, Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda, Fiji, Guam, Palau, Panama, Russia, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, US Virgin Islands, Vanuatu.
The EU list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions includes countries that have not engaged in a constructive dialogue with the EU on tax governance or that have not fulfilled their commitments to implement necessary reforms. Such reforms should be aimed at meeting a number of objective criteria of good tax governance, including tax transparency, fairness of taxation and the implementation of international standards aimed at preventing tax base erosion and profit shifting. The list is updated twice a year.
Meanwhile, according to the recent survey “Global Tax Evasion Report 2024 in the focus on our country shows that only “financial” wealththat means shares, bonds, fund shares and bank deposits, stolen by Italians to tax havens in Switzerland, Asia, Europe and America is equal to 196.5 billion euros. Of these, 181 billion are deposited in current accounts of offshore banks or in other financial assets, such as shares, bonds and fund shares.
Of this figure, 45.5%, equal to 82.6 billion, fled to Switzerland, despite the great strides made in recent years to abolish banking secrecy; 33.8% equal to 61.5 billion fled to other European Union countries such as Ireland and the Netherlands; 14.6% equal to 26.6 billion flew to Asia; 6% equal to 11 billion crossed the ocean and ended up in America.
The wealth of Italians was also used to purchase, without declaring it, real estate in particular locations for a total amount of 15.5 billion euros. The value of properties purchased on the French Riviera amounts to 7.3 billion, that of properties purchased in Paris at 3.7 billion, in London at 2.7 billion, in Oslo around 200 million and, outside Europe, in Dubai to 920 million and in Singapore to 140 million.