Bermuda and other nations that signed letters of agreement with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to avoid being put on a stop-list of countries with allegedly harmful tax practices and tax evasion, could opt out of their commitments, says a leading US lobby group.

The Center For Freedom and Prosperity, which believes in lower taxes and has been a strong opponent of the OECD's moves, said the letters are “virtually meaningless” and could be opted out of if a EU Savings Tax Directive currently being looked at was defeated.

Andrew Quinlan, President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, said: “Fortunately, the “commitments” made by low-tax jurisdictions are not binding unless all OECD member nations agree to the same misguided rules. This is why stopping the EU Savings Tax Directive is now a top priority.”

Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Daniel Mitchel, who has joined in the battle cry from the Centre For Freedom and Prosperity said some smaller low-tax nations could be willing to sacrifice their own economic interests to “prop up the decrepit economies of Europe's welfare state”.

Last week the OECD named the principality of Monaco as one of seven tax havens refusing to cooperate with the major international effort spearheaded by the organisation.

The revised list of so-called non-co-operative tax havens, which Bermuda fought hard to say off and which numbered 35 in 2000, now includes only Andorra, Liberia, Liechtenstein, the Marshall Islands, Nauru and Vanuatu.

All 15 Caribbean countries and territories named to the original blacklist have been removed, along with 13 other jurisdictions, according to revisions.

Mr. Quinlan said: “This announcement of a new “blacklist” is a non-event. The OECD agenda is a combination of imperialism - they targeted small jurisdictions - and hypocrisy - they did not apply the same rules to developed nations.”

He added that the EU Savings Directive will be blocked and said: “Extraterritorial taxation is not in the US's best interests. The US needs to take this opportunity and reform its tax system to attract more overseas capital, not scare it away.

“The Center for Freedom and Prosperity will work hard over the next several months to insure that all lawmakers, policy makers, opinion leaders and taxpayers are aware of the threat that tax harmonisation schemes from the OECD and EU pose to America's national interests.”

OECD member countries, which include the world's wealthiest industrialised nations, have threatened sanctions against countries that remain on the list, saying they encourage money laundering and tax evasion. The OECD says tax havens can lead to serious revenue losses that pose a potential threat to developing countries' economies.

Mr. Mitchel, added: “Under the old Soviet system, Russian workers had a phrase: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” The same can be said about the OECD's commitment letters.

“The OECD was forced to accept commitment letters that are predicated on all OECD member nations agreeing to the same anti-growth tax policies. This makes the commitment letters virtually meaningless.

“But this does not mean the battle is won. There are some politicians in low-tax OECD member nations that will be willing to sacrifice their nations' economic interests to prop up the decrepit economies of Europe's welfare states.

“This is why it is so important now to defeat the EU Savings Tax Directive. If this cartel is blocked, low-tax jurisdictions will be allowed to opt out of their so-called commitments.

Veronique de Rugy, Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute, said: “While the commitment letters are meaningless, they are unfortunate since they lend legitimacy to the imperialist actions of the tax-free bureaucrats in Paris. That is why I have high regard for the nations that refused to sign a commitment letter. Every nation should have the sovereign right to determine the taxation of income earned inside its borders.

“For the jurisdictions that did sign a commitment letter, they must understand that the OECD will not live up to its end of the Faustian bargain. Low-tax jurisdictions now will be pressed to dismantle privacy laws and become vassal tax collectors, notwithstanding the level playing field clauses in all the letters. They must not allow the OECD's dishonest bureaucrats succeed in this effort - and they should support the efforts to defeat the EU Savings Tax Directive.”

Caribbean jurisdictions removed from the blacklist since it first was published in 2000 are: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Seychelles, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Turks & Caicos and the US Virgin Islands.

The others removed are Bahrain, Cook Islands, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Maldives, Niue, Panama, Samoa, Tonga.

The OECD said three of those jurisdictions - Tonga, Maldives and Barbados - do not meet tax-haven criteria already follow transparent tax and regulatory standards.