Associate Minister of SIFA Leota Laki Lamositele in Parliament elaborated on the status of Samoa on the European Commission blacklist.
He said a country is blacklisted if it fails to comply with any of the following three EU criteria, such as Transparency – whether countries apply internationally accepted standards for exchanging tax information with each other.
Fair Tax Competition – whether countries are facilitating international tax avoidance and evasion. The offshore industry falls under this criterion.
Also, the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting minimum standard. To date, Samoa has been able to comply with EU criteria 3 our inclusion into the OECD’s Inclusive Framework in January 2020.
They are currently working on addressing Criteria 1 and 2. which entails maintaining largely compliant ratings from the OECD Global Forum on our Exchange of Information (AEOI) framework.
According to the Minister For Criteria 2 involves the removal of any preferential treatment offered to International Companies and arrangements registered with SIFA in our international finance legislations.
The amendments identified are in the form of a Draft Bill.
We are collaboratively working with MCR for a replacement regime, which is the implementation of a territorial tax system, which will come into effect once we remove the preferential treatments from our legislation. This will carefully be negotiated with the EU Code of Conduct Group to ensure that not only Samoa is removed from the blacklist but at the same time maintain business.
