Financial Transparency Coalition

At a time when governments are launching a fierce assault on tax havens, the Fortis arm now owned by the Dutch government is pressing ahead with plans to sell a tax administration and structuring business.

BERMUDA, a British territory in the North Atlantic, proudly announced this month that it had made it on to the OECD’s white list of benign tax regimes. That puts it among the countries that have “substantially implemented” internationally agreed tax standards, as monitored by the OECD, a club of industrial nations. Since January 2007 a stampede of offshore tax havens, many of them British one way or another, have rushed to sign enough bilateral tax-information exchange agreements, known as TIEAs, to get on the white list. The arbitrary threshold is 12.

WASHINGTON — The United States and Switzerland announced an agreement Friday to modify their tax treaty, a move that could help Washington crack down on offshore accounts for tax evasion.

LONDON -- The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said Thursday it plans to hold a meeting of its global forum on transparency and exchange of information Sept. 1-2. to discuss efforts to boost the sharing of tax data between countries.