Samoa making progress to be delisted from EU blacklist

Part of the Apia Business Centre.

Source: Press Release

APIA, 25 FEBRUARY 2021: The Samoa International Finance Authority (SIFA) said Samoa is making good progress towards delisting from the European Union blacklist.

In a statement, SIFA said the results of the European Union’s tax blacklist review have been just released.
“It is pleasing to note that the EU has accepted that Samoa is making good progress towards delisting from the blacklist. Of the two criteria that Samoa was found to be deficient, we have now fully complied with one of them.”

Way forward
Samoa is a responsible participant in the international tax arena; hence our commitment to work collaboratively with the EU (and other international bodies) to ensure delisting and finding the most appropriate pathways for Samoa to enable compliance with the outstanding EU criteria. Owing to the complexity of the issues involved, this work is anticipated to take some time, however we expect to have Samoa reviewed for delisting at the EU’s next review in October 2021.

Is the EU tax blacklist working?
No doubt there are widespread concerns that the EU blacklist is not fair and is biased against smaller countries. All but one of the twelve blacklisted countries has a population of less than 1 million.

A comprehensive analysis recently done by Tax Justice Network (TJN) in its “State of Tax Justice 2020” has revealed that all twelve countries blacklisted by the EU cause less than 2 percent of global tax losses. Hence Samoa’s contribution to global tax losses is a mere fraction of a percent. EU member states themselves account for 36% of global tax avoidance yet are never at any serious risk of being blacklisted.

Samoa is committed to good tax practices and joins a growing concern worldwide about problems with the EU blacklisting criteria and process. The EU needs to ensure a “level playing field” with all countries they are in partnership with in terms of equitably set tax governance norms.