Paris - Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay have all been tagged by the OECD as countries not complying with international guidelines designed to stop countries from acting as tax havens.

The list hopes to build momentum on pledges made at Thursday's G20 summit in London, where world leaders again proclaimed the need to crack down on tax havens, countries where banking secrecy allows people to hide income from their nation's tax authorities.

"Recent developments reinforce the status of the OECD standard as the international benchmark and represent significant steps towards a level playing field," said Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

"We now have an ambitious agenda, that the OECD is well placed to deliver on. I am confident that we can turn these new commitments into concrete actions to strengthen the integrity and transparency of the financial system."

The list also included the names of eight countries that have committed to the OECD tax haven standards, but have yet to implement them. Those countries are: Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Chile, Guatemala, Luxembourg, Singapore and Switzerland.

Additionally, 70 countries were listed as either having "substantially" implemented the proposals or having committed to them without substantial implementation to date. Liechtenstein and Andorra are among those countries.

OECD standards require exchange of information on all tax matters for the administration and enforcement of domestic tax law. It also provides safeguards for the privacy of any information exchanged.

The question of tax havens has been simmering in Europe since last year, when an informant revealed to authorities that several German citizens had been making extensive use of tax havens. As the financial crisis has caused fiscal stress around the world, the hunt for missing tax income has only increased.

Several countries have revised their policies in recent weeks in an effort to get their names removed from the black list. However, several of these countries have yet to put the new policies into practice. (dpa)