Speaking to International Adviser on a visit to London for the British Irish Council, Bell said there had already been too many headline grabbing figures cited in the past by the UK chancellor, and others, which had not delivered the amounts they said they would collect.
“It’s not true that there are hundreds of millions of pounds squirrelled away in the crown dependencies, and it’s a struggle to think where they are going to raise this amount of money”, he said.
In particular, Bell pointed out that the Isle of Man disclosure facility (IOMDF), similar in concept to more well-known Liechtenstein one, had only raised a relatively small sum.
As reported by HM Revenue & Customs, the IOMDF has generated a total of £3.7m (€5.25m, $5.56m) from 149 settlements, as at 31 March this year.
Bell said he had also struggled to meet Osborne on a formal basis, only this year having a chance encounter just after a speech at the Tory party’s conference in Manchester.
This was a shame, he said, because he wanted to have a proper meeting to understand better the scenario Osborne foresees in relation to the way the crown dependencies co-exist with the UK.
In the UK’s Autumn Statement, the commitment was made to raise an additional £5bn a year through tackling avoidance, aggressive tax planning, evasion, non-compliance, and imbalances in the tax system by 2019-20.
