On 1 September, the Government of Gibraltar issued a news release advising that Gibraltar had again achieved the second-highest OECD rating of ‘largely compliant’ in the latest Peer Review of tax information exchange carried out by a team of OECD Global Forum assessors. However, glancing at the summary of ratings of each of the individual elements considered, whilst the overall marking does come out as “LC”, in 3 of the elements it actually received a lower rating – in effect was marked down. These were in respect of –
- Availability of ownership and identity information (from “Compliant” to “Partially Compliant”);
- Availability of banking information (ditto); and
- Access to information (from “Compliant” to “Largely Compliant”).
The report calls for improvements in respect of beneficial ownership information and reliable accounting information, and whilst it has a reasonably good record in fulfilling assistance requests, the staffing needs to be enhanced and timeliness needs to be improved.
The report is at –