David Burt, the Premier and Minister of Finance, appears increasingly optimistic that a controversial landmark reform to the international tax system, will bring financial benefits to the island.

He has expressed as much in an interview with Sky News. He spoke of how the tax could be a net positive for the island.

The reform seeks to ensure multinational enterprises will be subject to a minimum 15 per cent tax rate. If enacted, the new Bermuda tax for large corporations would be effective for tax years beginning on or after 1 January 2025.

On August 8, the Government said it had opened a series of consultations on proposals to introduce such a tax, proposed at between 9 per cent and 15 per cent. The consultation was proposed to have ended on September 8.

The tax was one of the matters covered when Mr Burt spoke with Ian King on Sky News on Tuesday.

In the chat with the presenter, he doubled down on his initial observation that the recent cyberattack might have had Russian origins.

He commented: “I said at the time that the initial indications were it was Russian-based actors. We haven’t seen anything different than that.”

Mr Burt is in Europe for meetings with officials from Britain, the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and was speaking with Mr King while in Brussels. He returns to the island on Saturday.

During the conversation with the Sky News presenter, Mr Burt focused on the quick recovery from the outage and the resilience of Bermuda as a jurisdiction.

“Not all systems were affected, such as our international tax reporting systems and others. Those were not impacted by the attack.

“Our tax systems, our accounting systems, our vehicle registration systems, those were not impacted,” he said.

“The government services were able to continue. We were able to make sure the people continued to be paid.”

“We have a cyber-response plan. We followed that cyber-response plan, which means we shut down all services to make sure it didn’t spread,” he added.

“Phones services are back up. Government services are being restored. And we are continuing to press ahead with demonstrating Bermuda’s resilience. We just have to continue to improve our defences in these areas.“

On the plan for a corporate tax in Bermuda, the Premier emphasised the jurisdiction’s strong history of compliance with international tax initiatives and said that the corporate tax could be an overall positive for the island.

“Bermuda has always been a compliant and transparent jurisdiction when it comes to global tax matters.

“We were one of the first signatories to the global agreement, and we are going through the process to make sure we implement this,” he said.

Under a deal reached in 2021, 130 countries agreed to impose the 15 per cent corporate income tax and collect tax not charged in non-compliant jurisdictions.

“I think that if it’s successfully implemented, it will be a net positive for our economy,” the Premier said.

“Our approach is that any new revenues are not necessarily going to be revenue accretive to the overall budget, but we are going to reduce other taxes given that Bermuda has a consumption-based tax regime.“

“We believe that these reductions can significantly reduce the cost of living and the cost of doing business on the island.”

The Premier took the opportunity to tick off why Bermuda is a favoured jurisdiction for international insurers, emphasising innovation over taxation.

“Over the last 30 years, every new major innovation in insurance has come out of the Bermuda market,” he said.

Yesterday in a message on X, formerly known as Twitter, Mr Burt said that he met with John Berrigan, director-general of financial stability, financial services and capital markets for the EU Commission.

Mr Burt said they discussed efforts to maintain Bermuda’s Solvency II equivalence with the EU.