The authorities of the United Arab Emirates are discouraged by the inclusion of the country in the "black list" of the European Union.
According to Deputy Minister of Finance Yousef Haji Al Khoury, the UAE government is “surprised and disappointed” by including the country in the list of countries that do not meet the tax requirements of the European Union.
On Tuesday, the EU announced a blacklist of 17 tax havens, non-EU countries, which included the UAE and Bahrain. It took the EU officials a year to compile this list, functionaries accused a number of countries of facilitating the creation of fictitious companies and other structures used to evade taxes.
In addition to the black one, the European Union also compiled the so-called “gray list”, which included 47 countries.
Al Khuri commented on this situation as follows:
“The UAE has worked hard to comply with the requirements of the European Union on the exchange of tax information. Currently, reforms are underway in our country, which will be completed by October 2018. We are absolutely sure that after the completion of all reforms, the UAE will be removed from this list. We we express our readiness and desire to cooperate with our partners from the European Union on such an important issue as tax regulation. "
Al-Khoury noted that the EU authorities appreciated the UAE’s concern with this issue, the preparation by the country's government of relevant bills and reforms to ensure close cooperation with partner countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in accordance with the principles of international law.
The only unresolved problem in the UAE is the preparation of a legislative framework to combat such a phenomenon as BEPS (erosion of the tax base and the removal of profits from taxation). In October 2018, the UAE government will take a series of measures aimed at combating evasion of this kind, which will be finally ratified in all seven emirates in March.
The government expressed its confidence that in the next rating, the Emirates will be recognized as an international partner of the European Union.
