Dear Editor: What the BEPS is going on? (Part I)

The ever-increasing concerns of global poverty, inequality, climate change, natural disasters, and costly sustainable development goals have involuntarily made the global tax system (i.e. how governments cooperate to ensure fairer taxation and wealth distribution) a vital area of legal studies in the 21st century. In 2015/2016, I first came across this topic while interning at Holowesko Pyfrom Fletcher - a financial global advisory firm here in The Bahamas. I was shown the Bill that passed the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Common Reporting Standard into domestic law, which called on jurisdictions to obtain information from their financial institutions and automatically exchange that information with other jurisdictions on an annual basis. Initial concerns were whether the CRS undermines corporate privacy, and whether the technology and data are secure enough against cyber-attacks. These remain relevant concerns as we aim to re-establish the Bahamas' position as a leading International Financial Centre (IFC) in the world and to retool our offshore banking sector as a sector built upon bank "privacy" (i.e. open to legitimate review but not to all and sundry) as opposed to the old corrupt notion of bank "secrecy".

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