"Super Rich" Hide $11.5 Trillion in Tax Free Havens

The Christian Science Monitor reports that an amount greater than the U.S. National Debt is shielded in tax shelters abroad:

Although they have only 1 percent of the world's inhabitants, they hold a quarter of United States stocks and nearly a third of all the globe's assets.

They're tax havens: 70 mostly tiny nations that offer no-tax or low-tax status to the wealthy so they can stash their money. Usually, the process is so secret that it draws little attention. But the sums - and lost tax revenues - are growing so large that the havens are getting new and unaccustomed scrutiny.

http://www.acsblog.org/economic-regulation-employment-1311-super-rich-hide-115-trillion-in-tax-free-havens.html

$35k a year. You will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if you cheat on your taxes.

Garnish your wages, seize your bank account/s and your house, whatever it takes to make the little guy pay up.

From my collection on this topic:

Money Laundering and Corruption
Offshore banking, secret financial havens, money laundering and corruption steadily corrode the foundations of the nation-state. Offshore tax havens, spread by new computing and telecommunications, provide an unprecedented tax shelter, enabling rich citizens and corporations to escape the national tax system - eroding the tax base, weakening state finance and undermining the legitimacy of the tax system in the eyes of ordinary citizens. Offshore havens also promote money laundering, aiding criminal anti-social activities of all kinds, beyond the detection of national authorities. Corruption of public officials flourishes under such conditions.


From another snippet -- from four years ago.

The IRS estimates (2001) we are losing $70 billion a year in IRS revenue because of offshore tax havens.

"Tax havens are one of the world's great growth industries. There are more of them than ever, from Liechtenstein to Panama to Vanuatu, a tiny rock sticking out of the Pacific, well-wired into the world financial system. And the amount of money they harbor around the globe is staggering--as much as $5 trillion, according to the U.S. State Department. The Cayman Islands (pop. 35,000) has more than $800 billion on deposit--fully one-fifth as much as the entire U.S. banking system. And those Cayman deposits are swelling by an estimated $120 billion a year.

Not all offshore money is linked to crime or terrorism. Much of it belongs to wealthy people who are avoiding taxes in ways that often are legal under current law or--as the ads for "asset protection lawyers" on CNBC make blatantly clear--are shielding money from business partners and spouses.

The Internal Revenue Service estimates these deposits are costing the U.S. alone $70 billion a year in uncollected taxes."

<http://www.webguild.com/SENTINEL/banking_secrecy.htm> Monday, Oct. 22, 2001 <>

"Banking On Secrecy: Terrorists oppose scrutiny of offshore accounts. And so do many U.S. bankers and lawmakers," By ADAM COHEN.


How much is $70 billion? An amount less than that would accomplish the following:



The True Majority Campaign (which was putting forward the idea of cutting the Pentagon budget by 15%), calculates you could do the following with $60 billion (cited by Jim Hightower, Feb 2003 Hightower Lowdown):


<> Rebuild America's public schools over the next 10 years: $12 billion;
<> Feed and provide basic health care to all the world's poor: $12 billion;
<> Reduce class size in grades 1 through 3 to fifteen students per class: $11 billion;
<> Reduce the debts of impoverished nations: $10 billion;
<> Buy health coverage for every uninsured American kid: $6 billion;
<> Increase federal funding for clean energy and energy efficiency: $6 billion;
<> Publicly finance all federal elections: $1 billion;
<> Fully fund the Head Start program: $2 billion.

Profit from selling Americans a bill of goods, then refuse to pay taxes to the country that supported your enterprise.

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Have any stats on the BFEE or any of its minions? :eyes:

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thats exactly why these tax shelters exist -- they just move the money to someplace where it wont be taxed.

Theres no stopping this one, there will always be tax competition between countries.

Taxes against anything that can leave will cause it to leave; Employment, Jobs, Wealth, Commerce. All of these can only tolerate so much taxation before the business closes, or moves elsewhere.

Taxes against land wealth (or natural wealth) cannot leave, and they don't discourage productivity. Taxing labor-created capital and labor created wealth is an indirect tax on labor, and keeps people out of work and wages down.

Tax the crap out of land, and let labor and capital go free.

they may still be worth something after the Dubya gets through with the USA.
http://www.kcshop.com/foreigncurrency/Default.htm

Especially if they chose to "bank" it in places such as Nauru.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru