OECD and deoffshorization of microstates of Europe

Abstract

The article is devoted to studying the issue of the formation of the international legal regulation of the activities of so-called offshore zones – special jurisdictions that specialize in providing financial services to non-residents in conditions of low or zero taxation, stability and confidentiality. Since the late 1990s, the most successful anti-offshore policy has been conducted (in close cooperation with the G20 states) by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has begun to actively use both organizational and international legal methods in its activities. The most successful examples include the OECD adopting the International Standards for the Exchange of Tax Information (Tax Information Exchange Agreements) in 2009, the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Program in 2013 (which has become its most significant and successful initiative), the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement in 2014, as well as the Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting in 2016, and others.However, in Europe the OECD was forced to face a situation where not only member states or specific territories that are in one form or another directly dependent on said states served as offshore zones, but also small (micro) sovereign states that were not its members. The microstates of Europe ended up resisting the OECD's anti-offshore activities for quite a while, since the high profitability of the offshore business made these states accustomed to getting “easy” money, and their population – to the high standard of living, which was largely provided for by these funds. The conducted research allowed the author to draw the conclusion that multiple stages can be singled out in this confrontation, during which the microstates of Europe, somewhat successful at first, were eventually forced to cooperate with the OECD and officially accept the rules the latter, as well as the mechanisms of interstate tax control it introduced. To a large extent, this stemmed from the fact that the microstates feared the G20 countries would levy sanctions against them, as well as because some of the microstates of Europe, in light of the instability of the world financial and economic system, were looking for ways to access the European market by obtaining the status of associated EU members. Nonetheless, while formally adhering to the OECD requirements, the microstates of Europe are still attempting to provide offshore services to nonresidents by transforming and significantly complicating the financial schemes used for such purposes. General scientific methods, the technic method, the concrete-historical and the historicalgenetic methods, as well as the formal-dogmatic and the systemic approaches were used within the framework of the study.Offshores and the settlement of cross-border tax relations is one of the most vital economic problems of our time, yet no fundamental scientific research on the international relations of the OECD and the microstates of Europe has yet been carried out.