Tax evasion in Jamaica is getting harder!

By: Anthony Morgan

If you’re a foreigner planning to live in Jamaica just to avoid or evade taxes in your home country, then you may want to rethink that, especially if you plan to open local financial accounts.

Jamaica’s parliament recently passed a bill to strengthen the Administration of Tax revenue. This changes the Revenue Administration Act and allows the country to enforce international agreements, conventions and arrangements to exchange information for tax purposes. 

Finance Minister Dr. Nigel Clarke said the changes will require Jamaican authorities to give a report to the home country of certain foreigners living in Jamaica with accounts at local financial institutions, and vice versa.

But that’s only if the country is also a signatory to the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters (MAC), which Jamaica ratified in 2018. That treaty permits the global automatic exchange of information.

Dr. Clarke said this was a “scaling up” of what is obtained in the United States with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance (FATCA) Act. That Act requires that foreign financial Institutions and certain other non-financial foreign entities report on the foreign assets held by their U.S. account holders to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Dr. Clarke said the passage of the bill locally comes at a time when the world is becoming increasingly globalized, noting that countries have realized that “cooperation among and between tax administrations is the only effective means of incentivizing compliance on a global scale.”

Over 100 countries around the world, including other CARICOM nations, are also seeking to enact such conventions and agreements into domestic law.

Dr Clarke said the revised act will make Jamaica a safer place to do business.

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