Cyprus to cooperate with Russian tax authorities in bid to stay off black list

Cyprus will accelerate the procedure of tax information exchange with the Russian tax authorities in order to stay off the offshore countries black list, which is now being revised by the Russian Ministry of Finance, Russian government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported Dec. 10.

“Our Russian colleagues in the tax sector asked Cyprus to speed up the process of tax data-exchange to avoid double taxation, due to the fact that Cyprus might return to the offshore countries black list, from which they were excluded at the beginning of 2013,” Harris Georgiades, Cypriot finance minister, said.

The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information, which took place on Nov. 22, 2013 in Jakarta, claimed that Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, Luxemburg and the Seychelles did not fulfill OECD criteria on taxation and transparency of information.

If a country is included on the black list, import and export deals worth up to RUB 60 mln a year are automatically probed by the Russian federal tax services.