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2017 Ecuadorian tax haven referendum

Ecuador banning

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ28053338 ↗
Source-derived summary

A referendum on banning politicians and civil servants from having bank accounts or companies based in tax havens was held in Ecuador on 19 February 2017, alongside general elections. The proposal was approved by voters, giving officials one year to transfer their assets or be removed from their posts.

The question on the ballot was "Do you agree that, for those holding a popularly elected office or for public servants, there should be a prohibition on holding assets or capital, of any nature, in tax havens?"

Classification of tax havens

In preparation for the referendum, the Ecuadorian Internal Revenue Service issued a resolution outlining the criteria for a jurisdiction to be considered a tax haven, establishing two categories: Preferential tax regimes, and low tax jurisdictions. A preferential tax regime was classed as a jurisdiction whose effective tax rate is below 60% in relation to the Ecuadorian corporate income tax (CIT) rate of 13.2%. A low tax jurisdiction was classed as having an effective tax rate below 60% in relation to the Ecuadorian CIT of 13.2% and no substantial economic activity. The IRS may remove a country from their list of tax havens if it reforms its tax policy, if it enforces a treaty to avoid double taxation, including a special information exchange clause, or if its laws do not include banking confidentiality, securities or other regulations that prohibit sharing information with the Ecuadorian IRS.

Along with this definition, the Ecuadorian IRS published a list of countries which currently meet the definition of a tax haven under their law. This list included 28 jurisdictions in the Americas, 19 in Oceania, 16 in Europe, 13 in Asia, 9 in Africa and two other island territories.

Campaign

Outgoing President Rafael Correa stated that he would campaign in favour of the proposal, having previously stated that tax havens were one of the biggest issues for democracy.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “2017 Ecuadorian tax haven referendum” as ecuador banning. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2017—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Ecuadorian, haven and referendum can be independently traced.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as ecuador banning. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28053338. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017.

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This entry incorporates text from “2017 Ecuadorian tax haven referendum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.