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Archive for the ‘tax information’ Category

United States and Panama signed an agreement here Tuesday to exchange tax information, overcoming an obstacle to eventually realize a bilateral free trade agreement. The agreement was signed after a meeting between Treasury Secretary Timothy Either, vice chair and secretary and is Foreign Relations of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela.

The free trade agreement with Panama is one of the three that left pending the administration of President George W. Bush, and is considered the least controversial. Panama and the United States signed a free trade agreement in 2007, but the process was complicated when the Central American country’s National Assembly elected as its president a lawmaker wanted in the U.S. for killing a U.S. soldier in 1992. That legislature was president of the assembly only one year.

However, Bush did not get the support in Congress to ratify the treaty with Panama, nor planned with Colombia and South Korea before leaving office in January 2009. Last year, some Democratic lawmakers who criticized Panama as a tax haven, they demanded that that country signed a tax information agreement with the United States as a condition before any vote to ratify the trade agreement.