Cayman Moves To The “White List”

Originally Published in the Cayman Updater – August 2009

Cayman's commitment to international tax transparency standards has been recognised by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development ("OECD") which has moved the jurisdiction onto the OECD's "White List" of jurisdictions that are compliant with international tax transparency standards. Cayman signed its twelfth bilateral Tax Information Exchange Agreement ("TIEA") with New Zealand on 13 August 2009 and so now meets the OECD's minimum requirement set in April this year for a jurisdiction to prove that it is committed to and compliant with international tax transparency standards.

It is expected that Cayman will soon have many more TIEAs in place as it has unilateral mechanism agreements with Japan, Germany, South Africa, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Slovak Republic. The unilateral agreements have been hailed by the OECD as being both "imaginative and