Twenty-First Century Pirates of the Caribbean: How the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Robbed Fourteen CARICOM Countries of Their Tax and Economic Policy Sovereignty

Abstract:     
This article is concerned with a controversy that has been raging for over four years - the anti-harmful tax competition initiative launched by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in April 1998, and that organization's subsequent blacklisting of several small defenseless jurisdictions who have dared to use tax competitive measures to secure for themselves a small piece of the global financial pie. On one side of the controversy sits the OECD: rich, powerful, domineering, and exhibiting many of the features of the colonial powers of the late fifteenth through twentieth centuries. On the other side sits the targeted jurisdictions: mostly island-nations of the Pacific and Caribbean, with their fragile economies and a constant struggle to survive in today's globalized economy. This article focuses on the OECD and on one group of targeted jurisdictions - the member states of CARICOM. The article demonstrates how the OECD, through its anti-harmful tax competition initative, has robbed these Caribbean countries of their sovereign right to determine their tax and economic policies.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 50

Keywords: anti-harmful tax competition, OECD, CARICOM, sovereignty

JEL Classification: H2, F15

Accepted Paper Series