Free Republic

The revelations of the so-called Panama Papers that are roiling the world’s political and financial elites this week include important facts about Team Clinton. This unprecedented trove of documents purloined from a shady Panama law firm that arranged tax havens, and perhaps money laundering, for the globe’s super-rich includes juicy insights into how Russia’s elite hides its ill-gotten wealth. Almost lost among the many revelations is the fact that Russia’s biggest bank uses The Podesta Group as its lobbyist in Washington, DC. Though hardly a household name, this firm is well known inside the Beltway, not least because its CEO...

Progressives used to pressure U.S. corporations to cut back on outsourcing and on the tactic of building their products abroad to take advantage of inexpensive foreign workers. During the 2012 election, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney as a potential illiberal “outsourcer in chief” for investing in companies that went overseas in search of cheap labor. Yet most of the computers and smartphones sold by Silicon Valley companies are still being built abroad — to mostly silence from progressive watchdogs. In the case of the cobalt mining that is necessary for the production of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, thousands of...

A U.N. human rights expert urged the next U.N. secretary-general on Friday to make the elimination of tax havens a priority to ensure that corporations, billionaires and “kleptocrats” pay their fair share of taxes. Alfred de Zayas, an American law professor, also urged Antonio Guterres, who will succeed Ban Ki-moon as U.N. chief on Jan. 1, to call a world conference on phasing out the offshore havens. […] De Zayas told a news conference after presenting his new report to the U.N. General Assembly that it’s estimated that as much as $32 trillion are held offshore in secrecy jurisdictions escaping...

The European Commission is hoping that a new global reporting standard will eradicate tax evasion and tax fraud in the wake of the latest revelations in Switzerland. “We are hoping that the coming into force of this new agreement at the very latest by 2018 will put an end to tax evasion and fraud by the use of secret bank accounts,” European Commission spokesperson Vanessa Mock told reporters in Brussels on Monday (9 February). The EU and Switzerland negotiated an agreement on the taxation of savings back in 2014. The plan is to unravel the Swiss tradition of banking secrecy...

The U.S. and Britain have got themselves in another fine mess over populist measures against tax havens that don't work and smack of hypocrisy. Obama has set off once more on his crusade against foreign tax havens. His tactic is to extend the jurisdiction of the IRS to cover the whole world. His weapon is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act which requires all foreign financial institutions to supply full details of accounts held abroad by American taxpayers. There are a few problems. The first is that foreign banks have not taken too kindly to being tax gatherers for the...

Close relatives of China’s top leaders have held secretive offshore companies in tax havens that helped shroud the Communist elite’s wealth, a leaked cache of documents reveals. The confidential files include details of a real estate company co-owned by current President Xi Jinping’s brother-in-law and British Virgin Islands companies set up by former Premier Wen Jiabao’s son and also by his son-in-law. Nearly 22,000 offshore clients with addresses in mainland China and Hong Kong appear in the files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Among them are some of China’s most powerful men and women — including at...

  The European Parliament met Tuesday to discuss the issue of tax evasion throughout the UK and the Eurozone, and how the European Parliament might clamp down on those attempting to protect their well earned wealth from government confiscation.    All was going according to plan, until UKIP member Nigel Farage was given the floor.    Farage immediately launched into a classic rant against Barroso and the rest of the EU bureaucrats, stating that it is not the average man on the street that is engaging in tax fraud, but the European Parliament members themselves:    If we look at the...

The European Union’s leaders have agreed to push through a major policy to tackle tax evasion by the end of the year. The EU said the 27 heads of state and governments agreed at summit in Brussels Wednesday to an automatic exchange of bank information among the bloc’s tax authorities to catch tax cheats. … European Union leaders on Wednesday sought to advance their fight against tax fraud and close the loopholes for large corporations’ tax avoidance schemes. … According to a draft summit conclusion obtained by The Associated Press, the leaders are urging rapid progress in the “efforts taken...

Switzerland should reject EU plans for mandatory information exchange on bank accounts, the country’s President has said. His statements comes amid new momentum in the EU to establish a system of automatic exchange of information among its member states and with other countries. In particular, it is anxious to agree a bilateral deal with Switzerland, one of the world’s largest tax havens. Speaking over the weekend to the La Matin Dimanche journal, the Swiss head of state, Ueli Maurer, said that the EU’s stance was “a dangerous moment for the country.” He added that the country’s status outside the EU...

The global financial convulsion of 2007-2008 was followed by the resounding announcement of new priorities: international finance was to be better regulated and there was to be no mercy in the fight against tax havens. In short, we were to put an end to the black holes in a system that was wide open to abuse—at least if the very virtuous conclusions of the G20 held in London were to be believed. … Revelations of individual cases, no matter how fascinating they are, should not be allowed to distract attention from the underlying problem: tax havens are a threat to...

Most Americans know peaceful and prosperous Switzerland—America’s “sister republic”—for its beautiful mountains, tangy cheese, decentralized political system, and banks that pride themselves on protecting the absolute security of their depositors. Indeed, it’s illegal in Switzerland for banks to violate that privacy. But the U.S. government recently forced the Swiss government to make an exception, under threat of criminal prosecution in the United States against UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank. That bank must reveal information about as many as 300 of its American depositors who the U.S. government claims are guilty of tax evasion. Further, UBS must pay $780 million in fines....

JUST as the econ omy begins show ing glimmers of a turnaround, here comes President Obama with a "tax-reform" effort that's sure to sock the stock prices and after-tax profits of many of the biggest US employers. Obama's $190 billion business-tax hike will hit Americans whose jobs and pensions depend on these companies doing well, and will increase pressure on already struggling colleges and hospitals. Why? Because millions of individual investors hold the companies' stocks in their portfolios, mutual funds and pension funds, as do many colleges, hospitals, museums and other institutions in their endowments. Among the important employers in...

President Barack Obama's move to curb overseas tax havens and job outsourcing was his first major proposal in what promises to be a broad overhaul of the U.S. tax system. Obama chose a relatively populist initial step. Daniel Griswold, an expert at the Cato Institute think tank, said locating affiliates in foreign markets is now the chief way that U.S. companies reach new customers outside the United States. "This demagogic grab for more revenue will only cripple the ability of U.S. companies to expand their sales in global markets, putting in jeopardy the U.S.-based jobs that support their foreign affiliates,"...

Last week's Group of 20 statement on strengthening the world financial system railed against risks that tax havens pose to the world economy. Contrary to what this group of the world's largest economies claims, "ending" so-called tax havens would not fix the world economic slump. The only impact that ending tax havens would have would be to raise tax rates around the world, thus reducing economic growth and making the world poorer. The White House told this page that the existence of tax havens "costs countries tens of billions of dollars every year in tax revenue." It also argues against...

My job this evening is to present a moral defense of tax havens. To do so I need to explain why tax competition is important, to clarify why it depends on tax havens, and to demonstrate the valuable role tax havens play in the global economy. Let me first define what a tax haven is and examine the international controversy behind this issue. A tax haven is any jurisdiction, anywhere in the world, that has preferential rules for foreign investors. A country that presents itself as a tax haven does not believe it has any obligation to help enforce the...

The hunt for funds allegedly cheated out of investors by Bernard Madoff, who faces fraud charges in New York, has turned to offshore tax havens where investigators believe he may have salted away hundreds of millions of dollars. Stephen Harbeck, chief executive of America's Securities Investor Protection Corporation (Sipc) and official receiver of Madoff's now defunct brokerage business, said the hunt for funds was likely to spread all over the world. "We will trace funds wherever the trail goes," he said on the steps of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Sources close to the...

I've been looking at the possibility of retirement abroad for some time, so I'm on several e-mailing lists. I've been struck by how quickly a couple of these international agencies have pointed to the financial crisis as a marketing pitch. They're focusing on retirees and near-retirees hit hard by the crisis and encouraging us to consider a much more affordable retirement abroad. Here's the most interesting I've found so far (they even have a price list of common items): http://serenity21.com/ http://serenity21.typepad.com/serenity_real_estate/2008/10/to-north-americ.html http://serenity21.com/why_nicaragua.html http://serenity21.com/pricelist.html Very intriguing. I think there's going to be a big and growing market for them to cater...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Wealthy Americans are hiding about 1.5 trillion dollars in overseas tax havens in a "deceptive" partnership with top foreign banks such as UBS, resulting in 100 billion dollars in lost US tax revenue, a congressional probe was told Thursday. The hearing centered on a 115-page report following investigations into alleged abuses by UBS in Switzerland and the smaller LGT Bank in Liechtenstein amid a widening international investigation into tax scandals involving the two banks. "The evidence we have been able to obtain breaks through some of the wall of secrecy to show that these two banks have...

An informant who provided German authorities with data from a Liechtenstein bank that sparked a massive tax fraud probe has said his life is threatened, two news magazines are to report Monday. "You are putting my life in danger," Heinrich Kieber wrote to German intelligence services, according to German weekly Focus in an article released in advance of publication over the weekend. The informant has blamed the intelligence services for not keeping his identity secret and asked them to provide him with a new identity so that he can relocate to South America. His request has been refused, Focus reported....

The German government's purchase of data stolen from a Liechtenstein bank has reinvigorated longstanding debates about privacy, law enforcement and international relations. Much of the fallout has followed predictable patterns. Some argue that Germany's richest citizens should be brought to justice for failing to comply with the tax laws, while others point out that it is unseemly for a nation to spy on a peaceful neighbor. The conflict between Germany and Liechtenstein also has triggered a broader debate about tax competition and the role of so-called tax havens. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is trying to use...