Secretly, tiny nations hold much wealth
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.
For example: When London's Tax Justice Network (TJN) reported a month ago that rich individuals worldwide had stashed $11.5 trillion of their assets in tax havens, it caused a fuss in Europe. "Super-rich hide trillions offshore," blazed a British newspaper headline.
Although that report received little notice outside Europe, there are rumblings of concern in the United States. That's not surprising. Nations lose an estimated $255 billion in tax revenues a year because of the havens, according to TJN. The US alone probably loses $60 billion a year, a tax expert estimates.
The loss hits not only prosperous industrial countries, but also developing nations. As a result, dozens of church groups and other nongovernmental organizations concerned with world poverty are joining tax reformers in what will probably become a major political battle. They aim to stem the outflow of money from poor nations into tax havens - an outpouring that may exceed today's global foreign aid of some $60 billion a year.
"If we are serious about reducing poverty, one of the first things we need to tackle is an international financial system run by the rich, for the rich, at the expense of the poor," states David Woodward, director of the New Economics Foundation, a London think tank.
Corrupt officials in poor nations, illegally, and multinational corporations, mostly legally, siphon huge amounts of money into bank accounts and shell companies in 70 tax havens, such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Jersey.
"It's going to be the next major issue," forecasts Lucy Komisar, a New York journalist writing a book on offshore banking. She compares the drive against tax havens with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, in which she participated, and the feminist and environmental movements of more recent decades.
Ms. Komisar helped organize a meeting on Capitol Hill April 7 to get an American branch of the TJN going. Representatives of several members of Congress, the AFL-CIO and a few other unions, several prominent tax research groups, and the United Church of Christ attended. About a dozen well-known activist groups were also present, including Public Citizen, Greenpeace, and the National Council of La Raza.
By cracking down on capital flight and corruption in developing countries, "we wouldn't have so much poverty in the world," says Robert McIntyre, executive director of Citizens for Tax Justice. He offered at that meeting to find funding for the TJN group in the US and recruit a paid director.
Not everyone sees it this way. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity in Washington, for example, sees tax havens as "an escape hatch for overburdened taxpayers." It relishes "tax competition" between nations. The center also argues that bank secrecy in countries like Switzerland can protect the money of those who face persecution by repressive regimes.
The tax-haven numbers in the TJN report were calculated by a British research firm from conservative sources - such as Merrill Lynch's "World Wealth Report" and the Boston Consulting Group's "Global Wealth Report." The trillions of dollars reported don't include money parked in tax havens by companies - probably also a massive sum.
There are about 3 million shell companies (set up largely to duck taxes) in offshore tax havens, Komisar reckons. These tiny tax havens hold 31 percent of total world assets and 26 percent of the stock of US multinationals.
"As our economies have globalized, our tax systems remain nationally based and measures that should have been put in place decades ago to improve international tax cooperation have not been put in place," says John Christensen, international coordinator in London of TJN. "So the tax burden has been shifted from those who can afford it to middle- and low-income households, and from businesses to working people and consumers."
In the late 1990s, industrial-nation negotiators reached an agreement to pressure tax-haven countries to stop facilitating money laundering, drug dealing, and tax evasion. The deal was championed by the Clinton administration. But it was squashed by the new Bush administration, keen for tax cuts.
Then came 9/11 and a recognition that terrorists and drug dealers use the same international finance channels as tax dodgers. So the Bush administration "has become less strident in its support for bank secrecy and other nondisclosure policies," notes Mr. McIntyre.
Now, a pioneer opponent of tax evasion through tax havens, Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan, has joined with Sen. Norm Coleman (R) of Minnesota to sponsor the Tax Shelter and Tax Haven Reform Act. It would enable the Treasury secretary to designate a tax haven as "uncooperative" with Internal Revenue Service investigations. Though not a panacea, the bill, soon to be reintroduced in the current Congress, would give tax investigators a weapon: Income from such designated tax havens would lose some tax advantages.
