Bermuda has not been put on a United States tax black list of countries, according to the Ministry of Finance and the Department of Treasury.

A report this week in the Barbados Advocate said that Bermuda was one of four countries which included Barbados, on a US Treasury Department list of countries whose treaties it did not consider "satisfactory".

"Almost everything in the article is wrong," said Donald Scott, financial secretary at the Ministry of Finance. He said that Bermuda was not included in a published lists of nations that had a double tax treaty with the US simply because it does not have a double tax treaty with the country.

And this list of excluded countries was the basis for the Barbados article stating that Bermuda had been black listed.

A spokesperson for the US Treasury said: "Bermuda does not qualify because they do not have a comprehensive tax treaty with the US."

Mr. Scott explained that the misinformation had come about after the US Treasury issued a notice describing how the reduction in dividends from 39.6 percent to 15 percent was to be handled for US taxpayers who hold stock in foreign companies. He said that this was made necessary by the passage of the jobs and growth tax bill of last spring.

"What the Treasury notice says is that you must have a full tax treaty to qualify as a US taxpayer for the 15 percent capital gains rate on dividends received from a foreign country and it lists the countries that have full treaties. We cannot comment on the details of the Barbados treaty as we are not familiar with their treaty.

"Bermuda has a Tax Information Exchange Agreement with the US and it was always understood that it was not a full tax treaty. The Treasury Notice simply confirms this understanding. There is no implication of unhappiness with the Bermuda TIEA as suggested in the article."

The article, published on Monday in Barbados, was headlined `US: Double tax treaty unwelcome' and said that for the past five months Barbados' double taxation treaty with the US had been under the increasing pressure. "As a high-level Barbados team journeyed to Washington D.C. over the weekend for key talks on that long-standing accord, investigations revealed the US Treasury Department had placed the island on a list of four countries whose treaties it did not consider "satisfactory".

"Now, that Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have said the only way Barbados was likely to find itself off the list was if a new treaty was established or the existing one was amended or re-negotiated." It named Bermuda, Barbados, the Netherlands Antilles and Russia as on the so-called black list. It said: "This was confirmed in a US Treasury Department analysis released three weeks ago, which said that body was unhappy with the double taxation treaties with Barbados, Bermuda, the Netherlands Antilles, and the former Soviet Republics.

"On the other hand, another 52 countries including Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Venezuela, received passing grades."

What the US Treasury document actually said is that the US is not happy with the Barbados tax treaty, but the other three are exempted for other reasons.