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Commonwealth Secretariat press release

Joint Commonwealth-OECD Working Group on Harmful Tax Competition to Meet in London

24 January 2001

A joint Working Group of countries from the Commonwealth and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) meets in Marlborough House, London, from 26 - 28 January 2001 to discuss global cooperation on harmful tax competition. The group, drawn from ministers and senior finance and tax officials from 13 countries or associated territories, will be jointly chaired by Mr Owen Arthur, Prime Minister of Barbados, and Mr Tony Hinton, Australia's Permanent Representative to the OECD in Paris.

The group was established following talks between the OECD and Commonwealth countries in Barbados earlier this month on the OECD's initiative on harmful tax practices and that organisation's Memorandum of Understanding which proposed punitive measures against 35 offshore financial centres whose tax systems included elements defined by the OECD as harmful.

The Group's tasks are:

· To take the broad principles of transparency, non-discrimination and effective exchange of information and to find a mutually acceptable political process by which these principles could be turned into commitments. If successful, this process would replace the OECD's process in the context of its Memorandum of Understanding;

· To examine how the recently created Global Forum on taxation can evolve into a truly inclusive forum which would promote global co-operation on tax matters. It will also identify further relevant tax issues for consideration by such a forum.


Members on the Working Group are: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Barbados, the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, France, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, the Netherlands, Vanuatu and the United Kingdom. The report on this meeting is expected to be fed into a meeting to be organised in Tokyo on 15-16 February 2001 by the Japanese Government in cooperation with the OECD.

As with the conference in Barbados, this month's meeting in London is co-organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat and OECD, the two organisations which provide the Joint Secretariat for the Working Group.



Note to Editors

For further information on this meeting, please contact:
Ms Cheryl Dorall
Tel: +44 (0)20 7747 6387
Fax: +44 (0)20 7839 9081
Email: c.dorall@commonwealth.int .









01/03 24 January 2001
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ISSUED BY THE COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS DIVISION
Commonwealth Secretariat Marlborough House Pall Mall London SW1Y 5HX United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7747 6385/6 Fax: +44 (0)20 7839 9081
Email: info@commonwealth.int