EU agrees zero tax rate is not enough to define tax haven: Padoan

European Union finance ministers agreed that countries applying a zero tax rate cannot automatically be considered tax havens, Italy’s finance minister said on Tuesday, a move that may reduce the scope of a EU blacklist of offending jurisdictions.

“We have find an agreement on the fact that if a jurisdiction applies zero tax rates, this can be considered as an indicator of possible unfair practices, but it would not be enough to define a jurisdiction as non-cooperative,” Pier Carlo Padoan told a news conference after a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels which discussed criteria to set up a common blacklist of tax havens.