Above: Macau Tower

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Jamaica and Macau have signed an agreement on the exchange of information on tax matters, Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips said Friday.

The pact will strengthen administrative cooperation between the two countries, he said, along with enhancing the ability of both countries to monitor taxpayers and “ensure that the revenue owed to each jurisdiction is collected,” according to Phillips.

“This agreement will certainly help bolster the capacity of the tax authorities in Jamaica and Macau to mobilize revenue that is due to both countries,” he said. “We find it necessary to provide a more administratively effective environment that will enable us to secure the revenues that are necessary and also to be able to attract investment, because, increasingly, these agreements are part of the requirement of other states in doing business with Jamaica.”

Even during the previous two Jamaican administrations, the country had been seeking to improve what former Jamaican Finance Minister Audley Shaw said last year was a “whole set of people [in Jamaica] feeling that ‘taxes are not for me.'”

Jamaica and Macau, which is a special administrative region of China, agreed to the deal in 2011.

Tam Pak Yuen, Macau’s Secretary of Economy and Finance, said the treaty would help improve the investigation of cross-border tax evasion.

“It also shows the countries’ determination to cooperate internationally in a global fight against the illicit financial flows that [are] undermining our global financial systems and affecting the fiscal soundness of many jurisdictions around the world,” he said.