Poland takes St Kitts and Nevis off list of non-cooperative states

The permanent mission of the Republic of Poland to the United Nations has informed the government of St Kitts and Nevis that it has removed the Caribbean federation from its official list of uncooperative tax havens.

In 2015, the European Commission released a list of international tax havens and its ‘Action Plan for Fair and Efficient Corporate Taxation in the European Union’.

St Kitts and Nevis was included on the national list of 10 countries, and described as being non-cooperative.

This was despite the completion of two reviews by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) the previous year, which rated the country as “largely compliant”.

The publication of the lists resulted in several démarches made to the delegation of the European Union, protesting what the government called the “unfounded nature of the action”.

Move in the right direction

As part of efforts to repair the perception of St Kitts and Nevis, Minister fof Foreign Affairs Mark Brantley engaged his Polish counterpart in the margins of the EU-CELAC summit in October last year.

The federation has already been removed from the lists of Estonia, Italy and Greece.

And the announcement that St Kitts and Nevis has been removed from Poland’s list has been hailed by the ministry as “a move in the right direction and a signal of the unrelenting diplomatic efforts of the Federation”.