Bermuda feels heat over tax row

Bermuda was this week back in the spotlight as anger in the UK and other countries grows over multi-nationals avoiding tax.

British charity War on Want — founded in 1951 by future Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson — took aim at Bermuda based on inaccurate Reuters reports that Bermuda had “refused” to sign an international tax treaty in advance of next week’s summit of G8 nations in Northern Ireland.

The anti-poverty charity’s tax campaigner Murray Worthy said: “If Cameron (UK Prime Minister David Cameron) was actually serious about tackling tax havens, he could simply legislate to abolish all the UK’s tax havens, including Bermuda.

“Rather than taking decisive action, Cameron has chose to invite the UK’s own tax havens to sign a deal that only tinkers at the edges of their secrecy.

“It is an outrage that many of the world’s most significant tax havens that are used to dodge taxes around the world are British. Cameron’s failure to end this scandal is another nail in the coffin of his credibility on tackling tax dodging.”

Mr Worthy added: “As the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) noted on implementing the anti-bribery convention ‘the UK acknowledged that from a constitutional perspective the UK has unlimited power to legislate for the Overseas Territories.”

And he said: “In November 2012 David Cameron announced his intention to tackle tax havens during his presidency of the G8 saying ‘There are too many tax havens, too many places where people and businesses manage to avoid paying taxes’.”

In the left-leaning UK national newspaper The Guardian on Wednesday, a headline read “Bermuda refuses to sign up to Cameron’s tax evasion deal.”

The newspaper reported that Mr Cameron had made an agreement on tax transparency one of his central goals as he takes his turn at chairing the G8.

The Guardian — which described Mr Cannonier as “Bermudan Prime Minister” — added that Mr Cannonier had said that during a conference call involving the Overseas Territories before the London meeting, “none had expressed a willingness to commit to signing the convention”.

Mr Cannonier, as reported in the Bermuda Sun this week, said the island would not sign up this weekend because there were some concerns over details of the treaty, but that Britain had agreed to discuss them.

He denied Reuters reports on Wednesday that he had said he had told reporters that the Overseas Territories would not sign. The Bermuda Sun confirmed on Tuesday that he was already aware that Caymans and other territories would sign up this weekend.

And — as he told the Bermuda Sun in Wednesday’s edition — Bermuda has signed more tax information exchange treaties than almost any other country and that, in principle, Bermuda was in favour of tax information exchange.