The OECD announced that the Republic of the Marshall Islands has made a commitment to implement a programme to improve transparency and to establish effective exchange of information in tax matters.

As a result of this commitment, the Marshall Islands becomes the second country in the past month, following Liberia, to be removed from the OECD’s list of unco-operative tax havens. Only 3 countries remain on the OECD’s list of unco-operative tax havens: Andorra, Liechtenstein and Monaco.

The Marshall Islands joins 34 other jurisdictions that have made similar commitments aimed at ensuring an environment in which all significant financial centres meet high standards of transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes. The OECD’s work in this area is designed to enable countries to enforce their tax laws fully and fairly (see progress reports issued in 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2006), notably by ensuring that they can obtain from other countries relevant information when needed.

A recent report, “Tax Co-operation: Towards a Level Playing Field – 2006 Assessment by the Global Forum on Taxation”, shows that most countries have made considerable progress in implementing transparency and exchange of information standards, although it notes that further progress is still needed in some countries.