The data we have produced on each of the secrecy jurisdictions surveyed is extensive and not everyone will want to read or interpret it all. For this reason we have produced a summary report on each secrecy jurisdiction surveyed. Links to these can be found here.
We stress that in each case the data sources used can be found in our database. Please look there in the first instance if you have queries on the data presented.
Please also note with care the methodology we have used to appraise the data we have collected. Our aim has been to be objective. You may not agree with the criteria we have used, but we have disclosed our methodology and have sought to apply it consistently to data whose source we have referenced. This is the only appropriate basis for reliable research.
We will also be publishing reports on each variable on which we report for each jurisdiction. These reports can be found here.
We know some users will be surprised by our findings. For example, some will claim that accounts are available public record when we say they are not. This is because we expect all accounts to be available, not just some. Others will say information on ownership is published when we disagree. This is because we expect information on beneficial and legal ownership. Please check that you have fully understood the data we are reporting before challenging it. If you remain sure that the data we report is wrong, despite our best endeavours to check it and reference it to source, please do let us know providing authoritative referencing to prove why you think this is the case.
To assist usage these reports are presented in a consistent format. As such it should be easy to compare jurisdictions one with another, which is our intent.
The attentive reader may wonder why some jurisdictions with the same number of transparency credits receive a different opacity/transparency rating. The answer is simple: we were not always able to collect all the underlying information necessary to produce a rating on each of the twelve KFSIs. In such cases we have not divided the number of transparency credits by twelve, but by the actual number of KFSIs we were able to produce for the particular jurisdiction in question. There are two reasons why a jurisdiction's opacity/transparency rating would not be calculated with twelve as its denominator. First, if a jurisdiction was not monitored by the OECD's Global Forum on Taxation. In such cases, KFSI 1 on banking secrecy, and KFSI 8 on access to banking information, have been excluded from the rating. Second, if the jurisdiction in question was not sent a questionnaire within our TJN-Survey, we excluded KFSI 7 from the rating (this happened accidentally with only Austria and Belgium).
