The OECD no longer publishes a single blacklist of uncooperative tax havens the way it did in 2000. That job is now split in two: the OECD’s Global Forum rates jurisdictions on a four-tier scale through ongoing peer reviews, and the European Union maintains a working list of non-cooperative jurisdictions that triggers concrete tax penalties. As of February 2026, the EU list names ten places, and it is the list most people mean when they ask which countries are still flagged.
Jurisdictions Currently on the EU Non-Cooperative List
The Council of the European Union updates the list regularly. Ten jurisdictions appear on the February 2026 version:1Council of the European Union. EU List of Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions for Tax Purposes
- American Samoa
- Anguilla
- Guam
- Palau
- Panama
- Russia
- Turks and Caicos Islands
- US Virgin Islands
- Vanuatu
- Viet Nam
Vanuatu, Anguilla, Panama, and the Turks and Caicos have surfaced on various non-cooperation lists for more than two decades. Russia’s presence reflects geopolitical developments beyond tax transparency alone. Three U.S. territories — American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands — appear partly because they fall outside the Common Reporting Standard network that the United States itself has not joined.
The OECD Global Forum Rating Alongside
The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes runs peer reviews that grade each jurisdiction as Compliant, Largely Compliant, Partially Compliant, or Non-Compliant.2OECD. Ratings on Exchange of Information on Request As of 2026, 129 jurisdictions have completed the second round of reviews. Around 90% received Compliant or Largely Compliant ratings, about 8% were Partially Compliant, and roughly 2% were rated Non-Compliant.3OECD. Global Forum Releases New Peer Reviews on Transparency and Exchange of Information on Request A Partially or Non-Compliant rating is the OECD’s version of the same warning the EU list delivers, and the two lists overlap heavily.
What Puts a Jurisdiction on the List
Three standards drive the assessment. The first is Exchange of Information on Request. Under Article 26 of the OECD Model Tax Convention, a jurisdiction must use its own information-gathering powers to answer another country’s specific questions about a taxpayer’s accounts or income, even when it has no domestic tax interest in the data.4OECD. Implementing the Tax Transparency Standards Refusing to hand over records, or hiding behind bank secrecy, is the fastest way to a bad rating.
The second is the Common Reporting Standard. More than 125 jurisdictions now require their financial institutions to collect data on non-resident account holders and transmit it automatically each year to the home countries of those holders.5OECD. Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters, Second Edition Not adopting CRS, or lacking the technical capacity to transmit data securely, is a red flag.
The third is beneficial ownership transparency. Authorities must be able to identify the real people behind companies, trusts, and partnerships, and ownership, accounting, and banking records must be kept for at least five years, even after an entity is dissolved.6OECD. Exchange of Information on Request – Handbook for Peer Reviews 2016-2020 Nominee arrangements and anonymous shell structures are exactly what the rule targets.
A jurisdiction can have clean statutes and still fail if requests go unanswered in practice. The peer review’s second phase tests whether real requests get real answers on time.
What Being on the List Costs the People Who Use It
The label is not only reputational. EU member states committed to applying at least one of four legislative defensive measures against transactions with listed jurisdictions, and they layer administrative measures on top.1Council of the European Union. EU List of Non-Cooperative Jurisdictions for Tax Purposes
A company paying a service fee, interest, or a royalty to an entity in a listed jurisdiction can lose the deduction entirely, so the payment ends up increasing domestic taxable income rather than reducing it. Withholding taxes on dividends, interest, and royalties flowing to listed jurisdictions can be pushed well above the 5% to 15% rates common in tax treaties, capturing revenue before the money leaves. Controlled foreign corporation rules bite harder: income parked in a subsidiary in a listed jurisdiction is more readily taxed to the parent as if the parent had earned it directly, with lower thresholds and narrower exemptions. And participation exemptions that normally let dividends from foreign subsidiaries flow tax-free up through a corporate group may not apply at all.
Administrative consequences follow the legislative ones. Taxpayers with any connection to a listed jurisdiction face heightened auditing and reinforced monitoring of the underlying transactions. The combined weight is designed to make routing money through these places genuinely expensive.
The Global Minimum Tax Layer
On top of the list-based measures sits Pillar Two, the global minimum tax. It sets a 15% floor on the effective tax rate for multinational groups with annual consolidated revenues of at least €750 million. Where a group’s operations in a jurisdiction are taxed below 15%, a top-up tax closes the gap through one of three mechanisms: the Income Inclusion Rule collected by the parent’s home country, the Undertaxed Profits Rule collected by other jurisdictions where the group operates, or a Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax collected by the low-tax jurisdiction itself.
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom already have rules in force. As of early 2026, 147 members of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework have agreed to administrative guidance under Pillar Two. The first GloBE Information Returns for calendar-year taxpayers are due by June 30, 2026, and require more than 100 data points.
The United States has not adopted Pillar Two. Congress rejected an implementation proposal, and in mid-2025 the G7 reached a side-by-side understanding that excludes U.S.-parented groups from the Income Inclusion Rule and the Undertaxed Profits Rule as long as existing U.S. minimum tax provisions remain in place. For U.S. multinationals with subsidiaries in flagged jurisdictions, the compliance landscape is therefore different from that of European or Asian peers, though the underlying incentive to move profits out of low-tax havens still runs in the same direction.
What U.S. Taxpayers Have to File
Holding an account or entity in a jurisdiction on the EU list does not by itself change what a U.S. taxpayer must file. The federal disclosure regime applies to foreign accounts and foreign entities generally. What the label changes is scrutiny: an audit is more likely, and the penalties for getting it wrong are already severe.
FBAR (FinCEN Form 114)
Any U.S. person with a financial interest in, or signature authority over, foreign financial accounts must file an FBAR if the combined value exceeds $10,000 at any point during the calendar year.7Internal Revenue Service. Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) The threshold is aggregate, so five accounts of $2,500 each cross the line. Civil penalties for non-willful violations can reach $10,000 per account per year, and willful violations carry far steeper consequences, including criminal prosecution.
Form 8938
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act requires foreign financial institutions to identify and report accounts held by U.S. persons, and it requires U.S. taxpayers to report specified foreign financial assets on Form 8938 above these thresholds:8Internal Revenue Service. Do I Need to File Form 8938, Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets
- Single filers living in the U.S.: more than $50,000 on the last day of the tax year, or more than $75,000 at any point during the year.
- Joint filers living in the U.S.: more than $100,000 on the last day of the tax year, or more than $150,000 at any point during the year.
- Single filers living abroad: more than $200,000 on the last day of the tax year, or more than $300,000 at any point during the year.
- Joint filers living abroad: more than $400,000 on the last day of the tax year, or more than $600,000 at any point during the year.
Form 8938 and the FBAR are separate filings with different thresholds, procedures, and penalties. Both may be required for the same accounts.
Form 5471
A U.S. person who controls a foreign corporation, meaning more than 50% of voting power or total value, must file Form 5471. The requirement also reaches U.S. shareholders who own at least 10% of a controlled foreign corporation.9Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5471 When the foreign corporation sits in a jurisdiction flagged as uncooperative, the CFC rules described earlier tend to apply more aggressively, pulling income up to the U.S. parent sooner and with fewer exceptions.
Why the U.S. Is Not on the Same System
The United States has not adopted the Common Reporting Standard. It relies on FATCA, which operates through bilateral intergovernmental agreements rather than the OECD’s multilateral network.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1471 – Withholdable Payments to Foreign Financial Institutions Under CRS, participating jurisdictions automatically exchange account data with every other participating country. Under FATCA, foreign institutions report U.S. account holders to the IRS, but the reciprocal flow back out is much narrower. That asymmetry is one reason several U.S. territories appear on the EU list.
For a U.S. taxpayer, the practical effect is that FBAR and FATCA already impose obligations that are, in many respects, stricter than CRS would require. The real risk is overlap: U.S. reporting on one side, and CRS-based reporting by a foreign jurisdiction on the other, both attaching to the same account. Add a listed jurisdiction to the picture and the audit exposure climbs sharply without any change to what has to be filed.