G20 calls on Panama to improve tax transparency 'without delay'

A meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors made a call on Friday to certain countries and jurisdictions (including financial centers) to fully comply and "without delay" with the OECD's global standards on tax transparency.

The call was directed at countries like Panama which have not yet committed to the multilateral and automatic exchange of tax information by 2017 or 2018.

After the release of the so-called Panama Papers, the OECD slammed Panama for dragging its feet in fully complying with its standards.

Panama's minister of foreign affairs, Isabel de Saint Malo de Alvarado, announced on Thursday that the country was "fully and immediately committed to the implementation of bilateral automatic exchange of information consistent with the goals of the [OECD's] Common Reporting Standards."

However, the OECD is promoting the automatic exchange information on a multilateral level while Panama wants to do this on a bilateral level.

On the multilateral issue, the minister said in a rather vague way that Panama is ready to start an international and technical dialogue to evaluate "multilateral mechanisms" to implement tax standards.

The meeting mandated the OECD to work with G20 countries to establish objective criteria by the group's July meeting to identify non-cooperative jurisdictions with respect to tax transparency.

Defensive measures will be considered by G20 members against non-cooperative jurisdictions if satisfactory progress is not made, the meeting said in statement.

The OECD's Global Forum will assess the progress and produce a report on tax information exchange and transparency before the end of the year.

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