Officers’ taxation training trip to Montserrat
Two government officers travelled to the Caribbean to deliver training workshops to help the governments of Montserrat and Anguilla fulfil their international obligations on tax information exchange.
The Isle of Man Government is championing the four-day course in Montserrat as a further demonstration of its commitment to international transparency and information exchange standards.
The British Overseas Territories 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/.
Funded by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, David Griffin, a legal officer at the Attorney General’s Chambers, and Colin Goodwin, deputy assessor of income tax, spoke to a group of tax, legal and financial officers from the two islands.
It covered assessing the validity of incoming TIEA and mutual legal assistance requests, managing the exchange process, and handling appeals and challenges.
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 was involved in the OECD subgroup which developed the 2002 OECD model tax information exchange agreement. Since then it has signed 25 TIEAs and four double taxation agreements.
The OECD recently confirmed that the island is one of eight reviewed jurisdictions found to have all elements of effective information exchange in place.
