Managing money
Ray Robinson shares some thoughts on tax havens
Recently I have read Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World by Nicholas Shaxson. He defines a tax haven as ‘a place which seeks to attract business by offering political, stable facilities to help people or entities get around the rules, laws and regulations of jurisdictions elsewhere’. He also outlines ‘how the elites in developing countries can transfer their personal wealth to tax havens elsewhere thereby depriving their own countries of the tax which should be paid in them. More than half of world trade passes at least on paper through tax havens’. They offer secrecy in various forms, which allows criminal money to be incorporated into the system, and very low taxes, which attract money by letting people escape tax. The book is an illuminating and disturbing account of how the system works, but also has practical proposals for seeking to modify the many complexities of the powerful structures that have been built up over the years.
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