The ultra-rich are hiding way more money overseas than anyone realized

Related: Tax Evasion and Inequality

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Source: Washington Post

The ultra-rich are hiding way more money overseas than anyone realized

By Ana Swanson June 1 at 8:00 AM

It was the most consequential leak in the history of the offshore world, providing journalists and the public an unparalleled view into a notoriously shadowy industry that shuttles secret wealth around the globe.

In 2007, an engineer extracted detailed records on the hidden wealth of more than 30,000 clients of HSBC Private Bank, the Swiss subsidiary of the British multinational banking giant, and secreted them to the French government. The data, which eventually became known as the “Swiss leaks,” ended up in the hands of other authorities and of journalists.

Now, that data, along with the Panama Papers — the records of a Panamanian law firm dealing heavily in offshore finance that were leaked to journalists last year — is providing academic researchers with a valuable look inside the opaque world of tax evasion and offshore holdings.

In a newly released paper, researchers in Scandinavia and the United States use the Swiss and Panamanian leaks to show that global tax evasion is likely much more prevalent than previously thought. Their estimates indicate that the top 0.01 percent of the wealth distribution own about half of all offshore assets and may be hiding roughly a quarter of their wealth offshore.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/01/researchers-are-figuring-out-just-how-much-wealth-the-super-rich-are-hiding-overseas/

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Source: The Guardian

Super-rich evade on average nearly third of their due tax

Chance of assets being hidden rises very sharply with wealth,
finds economists’ study based on Panama Papers data

Rupert Neate
Thursday 1 June 2017 18.20 BST

The richest 0.01% of households, involving those with more than £31m assets, evade paying 30% of their taxes on average, according to an academic study of tax evasion based on data revealed in the Panama Papers and the leaks concerning the HSBC Swiss private bank. Economists, who matched people named in the leaks with public wealth records, found that “the probability to hide assets rises very sharply with wealth”.

The paper found that the super-rich evaded more than 10 times as much of their due taxes as the wider population, which on average evaded 2%.

Most of the tax was evaded by hiding wealth in offshore accounts, which the researchers said was “extremely concentrated” in the hands of only the very wealthy, who could afford accountants, lawyers and bankers to advise them on setting up such holdings.

“The probability to hide wealth offshore rises very steeply within the top 1%,” the paper, entitled Tax Evasion and Inequality, said. “By our estimate, the top 0.01% of the (wealth) distribution owns about 50% of (the wealth).”

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/01/super-rich-evade-on-average-nearly-third-of-their-due-tax