From Ted Vibert.
THE Jersey tax avoidance industry (i.e. the finance industry) has worked overtime to sell to the people of Jersey the idea that a recent decision in the United States is the result of lobbying by our politicians.

Only politicians as politically devious as Senator Ozouf would have the gall to put this into the public domain, because it is absolute rubbish.

The people of Jersey need to know the facts.

In 2007 an American Senator, Carl Levin – an avowed enemy of tax havens – took a Bill to the Senate called A Stop Tax Avoidance Act. This included a section that provided a blacklist of tax havens around the world. He withdrew it, and has now just replaced it with a beefed-up version.

An important feature of his new proposed legislation is the removal of the blacklist of secrecy jurisdictions that was present in the previous version. Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man were included in this list.

Foolishly, Senator Ozouf responded to this news by preening himself and claiming that he and staff from Jersey Finance had lobbied American officials to have the Crown Dependencies removed from the blacklist and they had been successful.

Senator Ozouf said: ‘We are delighted, therefore, to see that we have been listened to and there is now a greater understanding in Washington of our open and transparent regime.’

That is complete nonsense.

The Crown Territories were not removed from the blacklist – the whole blacklist was removed. And it was removed because Senator Levin, following advice from US Treasury officials, changed his Bill so that it concentrated the whole direction of the Bill on US persons who do businesses with foreign financial institutions that don’t comply with their 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliant Act (FATCA).

This Bill, instead of recommending that the US Treasury automatically imposes stiffer requirements on those who use offshore jurisdiction, will build on FATCA by creating tougher disclosure, evidentiary and enforcement consequences for US persons who do business with foreign financial institutions that reject FACTA’s call for disclosing accounts used by US persons.

Jersey and the Isle of Man are included in those territories not complying with FATCA’s demands.

Senator Levin told Congress: ‘By focusing on non-FACTA financial institutions instead of offshore jurisdictions, my Bill relieves the Treasury of a difficult task while providing additional incentives for foreign banks to adopt FACTA’s disclosure requirements.

‘“Probably the biggest change in this Bill from the last Congress is that this Bill no longer requires the Treasury to develop a list of offshore secrecy jurisdictions and then impose tougher requirements on those US taxpayers who use these jurisdictions.

‘We are taking a different approach than that contained in the last Bill. Our focus is not so much on the jurisdictions [the blacklist], but rather on the financial institutions that specifically shun FATCA, which is our crucial tool in fighting abusive offshore behaviour. They are now the targets of this Bill.”

It is quite clear from this evidence that the US has not listened to the pleadings of our politicians. They have simply decided on a better, tougher, more effective route of stopping the drain of money out of their country which Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man facilitates.