Barbados’ authorities have found themselves in recent months, jumping through hoops and skipping over ropes again to meet the requirements to be removed from the ‘grey list’ of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).We have become used to the constantly moving standards of compliance that require us to contort ourselves even more with every iteration of the rules from the self-appointed judges and juries of Europe and other Western partners.In February, Kerrie Symmonds, the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade announced with glee that in the 2023 Harmful Tax Practices Peer-Review Results on Preferential Tax Regimes released in January, the OECD listed Barbados as a “not harmful” jurisdiction.This upgraded status was based on the fact that “economic substance requirements were introduced taking effect from 1 January 2019” and that Barbados’ domestic legal framework met all aspects of the [OECD] standard.As we have acknowledged, the celebration is usually short-lived because the rules have been designed in a way that keep the goal posts malleable and the concrete around them soft enough to be uprooted with hardly any notice.
