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Barbados Not Interested In Being A Tax Haven For The Shady

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International Business (IB) is one of our key productive sectors. Successive Barbados governments have supported this sector and it has gone from strength to strength. Recently it was drawn to the attention of Barbados Underground a website which found the time to knock our IB sector. Here is an excerpt from the website which appears to be owned by a Panamanian Law Firm based in Guatemala.

Barbados has a number of Tax Treaties that turn us away from this jurisdiction right off the top. Tax treaties open the door to wholesale fishing expeditions where records are turned over just to see if maybe there was a tax violation.

Often times it is left to BU and a few others to challenge some of the misinformation which is deposited on the Internet. Certainly to be criticised by a law firm out of Panama/Guatemala is a good thing considering the type of business Barbados wants to attract. Based on what we understand from people in the know, Barbados has never built its IB sector using a privacy model.

After the OECD flexed its muscle sometime ago Barbados unlike many other countries has enjoyed a white listing. Partly responsible for our good standing has to do with Barbados building an IB sector based on Tax Treaties. Barbados has shown its commitment to building a quality sector by establishing a Treaty Negotiating Team with full support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From all reports the sector is holding its own despite the global recessionary climate.

To Panama Legal Law Firm we say to you to feel comfortable in your loosely regulated jurisdictions of Central America. Barbados is a jurisdiction interested in attracting companies which have nothing* to hide.

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6 responses to “Barbados Not Interested In Being A Tax Haven For The Shady”

  1. BDs Hot Sauce Avatar
    BDs Hot Sauce

    It’s good Barbados has taken a transparent approach to what can be a key attraction for money laundering. However I could only wish for such transparency in other areas where budgets have been allocated without projected results.

  2. anthony Avatar
    anthony

    Only thing i got from the website is that if you got something to hide we are the perfect place for it. Barbados being very open about its record you can’t hide anything.

  3. David Avatar
    David

    @anthony

    Why do you think a Panamanian Law Firm would seek to bad talk our IB jurisdiction when we clearly go after different customers?

  4. anthony Avatar
    anthony

    That I really don’t know. Maybe it was because of Barbados black listing in the past but that change ever since. I think offshore infrastructure in Barbados is still superior to panama but we go after a different set of IB client so there no reason for any bad talking at all.

  5. Jon Avatar
    Jon

    In my view Barbados launders money legally and in plain sight with tax treaties.
    One example: The tax treaty between Barbados and Canada legally washes billions and billions of dollars through Barbados each year. A small group of wealthy Canadians and corporations like it that way.
    It’s a huge scandal that has never been touched upon publicly.
    They call it ‘Foreign Direct Investment’, or FDI, and it amounts to between US $45 and $75 billion every single year.
    Barbados has an annual Gross Domestic Product of approximately $3.5 billion. Less than a tenth of what Canadians send to the island.
    Conservative estimates show that Canadian taxpayers pay roughly $1.5 to $2.5 Billion every year to support the tax treaty between Canada and Barbados. But it’s likely that it is much, much more. The Canadian government calls this “tax leakage.”
    It’s not fraudulent. But it is unfair to working Canadians and Barbadians. Try to find the results of all this Canadian “investment” on the streets in Barbados. You won’t find it because much of it passes right through the island and on to pure tax havens like the Caymans or Bahamas. Some of it goes right back to Canada tax free.
    The scale of this FDI is huge and contrasts with the fact that there are few signs of robust Canadian companies in Barbados making a real difference in the quality of life on the island. Can you imagine how the economic landscape would change in Barbados if that FDI translated into actual hard investment?
    Barbados is the third most-significant recipient of Canadian foreign direct investment on the planet, after the United States and the United Kingdom. But Barbadians hardly see a penny of this money trickle down to create real on-the-ground businesses, or local jobs.
    The scheme runs deep: Canadian banks have had domestic ‘private banking’ operations steering Canadian residents to their foreign tax haven subsidiaries and affliliates which they were promoting and thus actively assisting Canadian residents to avoid Canadian tax.
    In the meantime the Barbados government is trolling for more “foreign direct investment” any way they can. On Monday, September 27, 2010 government announced the signing of a double tax agreement with Spain.
    The spin is that it will bolster economic relations and consequently increase trade flows and bilateral investment. But more often than not the spirit and intent of tax treaties are violated, and most of it does not result in legitimate on-the-ground investments in Barbados.
    The truth is that apathy, cronyism and greed are the actual ruling elements behind the Canada-Barbados Tax treaty, and it is likely that other tax treaties will not be any different.
    The question is – how long will the average working person put up with it?

  6. David Avatar
    David

    @Jon

    Interesting comment. Do you have any hard information you can share?

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