Tax-Haven Crackdown Proves a Bust, But Governments Plan To Try Again
People are better at hiding taxes than officials are at ferreting them out
After the financial crisis—and the demands it placed on government balance sheets—a 2009 summit of the G20 economies decided to do something about the world's gigantic tax-avoidance problem. According to Britain's Tax Justice Network, at least $21 trillion and as much as $32 trillion of "unreported private wealth" is being held in tax havens worldwide. The summit launched more than 300 international treaties to force countries acting as tax havens to share information about cross-border bank activity. …
But when economists at the University of Copenhagen and the Paris School of Economics analyzed the results of the treaties (PDF) earlier this year, they found little change in the funds deposited in tax havens. Mostly, the illicit money flowed from European tax havens like Jersey, Luxembourg and Switzerland, which were more likely to sign new treaties, to tax havens that weren't, like Singapore, Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands. Some world historic effort.
Hide Comments (0)
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post commentsMute this user?
Ban this user?
Un-ban this user?
Nuke this user?
Un-nuke this user?
Flag this comment?
Un-flag this comment?