American Samoa remains on the Europena Union black list of tax havens despite efforts by US Treasury and ASG to delist the territory.
In the latest development, the EU is set to remove Bahrain, the Marshall Islands and Saint Lucia the list leaving only six jurisdictions on the list, three months after it was set up, an EU document shows.
EU finance ministers are expected to endorse the proposal at their regular monthly meeting in Brussels on March 13.
The six jurisdictions that remain on the blacklist are American Samoa, Guam, Namibia, Palau, Samoa and Trinidad and Tobago.
Bahrain, the Marshall Islands and Saint Lucia were delisted after they made “specific commitments” to adapt their tax rules and practices to EU standards, the document says.
Those commitments are not public.
In January, EU governments decided to remove from the blacklist Barbados, Grenada, South Korea, Macao, Mongolia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates and Panama.
A response to the inclusion of American Samoa and Guam on the EU blacklist came in a December 27th letter from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to Mr Jeppe Tranholm Mikkelson, Secretary General of the Council of the European Union.
The Treasury Secretary objected to American Samoa and Guam being on the list.
He said as territories of the United States, the two participate in the international community through the United States.
The commitments and actions of the United States in implementing Base Erosion and Profit Shifting or BEPS minimum standards extend to the US territories.
In addition, the US territories are evaluated as part of the review of the United States in the Global Forum per review process and under the criteria for non co-operative tax jurisdictions established by the G-20.
Therefore American Samoa and Guam and other US territories are already subject to monitoring of the implementation of international tax standards.
Mr. Mnuchin also stated that there is no basis for concluding that American Samoa and Guam have any role in promoting the evasion or avoidance of taxes imposed by European Union member states.
