Labour: “We’ll make Jersey open the books”

Tuesday 14 April 2015

Labour’s manifesto includes a pledge to force Jersey into producing a public register of company ownership, piling on more pressure from the UK for the Island to reform tax laws.

The pledge was included in the party’s manifesto, which was released yesterday ahead of the election in less than a month on 7 May.

The latest polling yesterday by Election Forecast showed Labour were just nine seats behind the Conservatives – but both parties were some way off the numbers needed for an outright majority, although polls are fluctuating every day. Neither party winning a majority would mean either a coalition with another party, or a minority government reliant on doing deals with smaller parties such as the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party to get through key votes.

Jersey already has a registry of beneficial ownership – effectively, a list of companies that says who really owns them – but it’s a private document that’s only available to regulators, tax authorities and law enforcement.

But the pressure from all sides of the political spectrum in the UK is building for the Island to open that registry to public scrutiny – something that the UK say they’re planning to do themselves. Last month, the Conservative-Liberal coalition stepped up the rhetoric, saying the public register was needed to meet “the urgent challenges of illicit finance and tax evasion”.

Labour’s manifesto essentially covered similar ground, but added that they wanted country-by-country reporting by companies to say what they earned in which jurisdictions, and to end tax breaks for hedge funds.

The manifesto made it clear that if elected to govern, Labour would take swift action.

It states: “Our first Finance Bill will close the tax loopholes that cost the Exchequer billions of pounds a year. We will introduce tougher penalties for those abusing the tax system, end unfair tax breaks used by hedge funds and others, and bear down on disguised employment.

“We will seek international agreement to make country-by-country reporting information publicly available, and we will act at home if agreement is not reached. British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies will be required to produce publicly available registries of the real owners of companies based there.”