Sunday, October 11, 2015

Inequality is the great concern of our age. So why do we tolerate rapacious, unjust tax havens?

Examine democratic and budgetary crises across the world and you’ll find a running theme – tax havens. Let’s take a look: in the last three years alone, in France the budget minister has had to resign because he had cheated on his taxes for 20 years through unreported offshore accounts. In Spain, the former treasurer of the party in power has gone to jail after having revealed a hidden system of financing through Swiss banks. In the United States, Congress has revealed that Apple avoided tens of billions in taxes by manipulating the location of its profits, at a time when US infrastructure is crumbling.
Accepting the status quo seems irresponsible.…
There have been numerous journalistic investigations, which have pushed forward our understanding of the tricks used by multinational firms, but from careful case studies it is hard to infer the overall cost to government coffers.
In my new book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, I try to fill this gap. I gathered the available data sources on the international investments of countries, the balances of payments, the on- and off-balance sheet positions of banks, the wealth and income of nations, the accounts of multinational companies and more.
Some of these statistics have never been used before and this is the first time that all this information has been collected, confronted and analysed with a single objective: to expose the true activities of tax havens and their costs to foreign nations.
Longish but definitely worth a read.

The Guardian — Comment is free
Inequality is the great concern of our age. So why do we tolerate rapacious, unjust tax havens?
Gabriel Zucman | Assistant Professor of Economics, University of California Berkeley
ht Mark Thoma at Economis'ts View

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