Putting truth forward

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As those who reside and work in Cayman know, our nation has been at the centre of a recent debate regarding the financial practices of jurisdictions that are so–called tax havens.

One unfortunate outcome of this debate is that the reputation of the Cayman Islands is being deliberately tarnished by writers and politicians who continue to falsely refer to our nation as a tax haven – and the continued deliberate association of the Cayman Islands with other jurisdictions that, according to the Organisation for Economic Co–operation and Development, are tax havens.

As our laws and treaties make clear, the Cayman Islands are not a tax haven. According to the IRS, tax havens are “jurisdictions that offer financial secrecy laws in an effort to attract investment from outside their borders.”

The Cayman Islands financial laws do not permit tax evasion. In fact, our banking system operates under full transparency – we have comprehensive tax information agreements and treaties in place with both the US (Tax Information Exchange Agreement), the 27 European Union jurisdictions (the European Union Savings Directive) and 20 other jurisdictions pursuant to OECD form bilateral and unilateral tax information treaties that prevent tax evasion.

I’m happy to see articles such as ‘Critics call Delaware a tax haven’, which paint a broader picture concerning the truths of the financial services industry – without resorting to the erroneous generalizations and falsehoods seen in other recent articles that have sought to adversely tarnish the reputation of the Cayman Islands . As I clearly describe above, nothing could further from the truth.  

Anthony Travers