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I was talking to a teacher in management who worked with finance, he told me that tax havens will never get solved to this day. Every developed country has its
by jokoon 9y ago
I was talking to a teacher in management who worked with finance, he told me that tax havens will never get solved to this day.
Every developed country has its own tax haven. Even if a country manages to ban banks from transferring money to a tax haven, businesses would move to other countries or find other loopholes.
It's a race to the bottom. I guess the only thing that would solve the situation is a global agreement against tax havens, something that would require a lot of diplomatic work between countries, so I guess the UN would be involved somehow?
I hear so many people ranting about the government increasing their taxes, so often in their anger they sympathize with companies who use tax havens, surprisingly, saying it's the fault of politicians and their whole "gang".
I am still waiting for voters to be attentive to this not sexy problem of taxation, and maybe, maybe, if large companies's image suffer from it, maybe things will move... But it would require citizens to at least be aware of the accounting of all of this...
- tedeh 9y agoThis is already starting to happen, see for example AEOI: http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/automaticexchangeofinformation.htm http://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/automaticexchangeofinfo... I believe governments (some of them, starting in Europe...) may very well be on their way towards harmonised tax levels because there is just so much money they are missing out on and they know it. Ireland may be reaping most of the benefit as it stands right now, but it is probably clear that a slightly higher tax in Ireland and a slightly lower one in other European countries may well net Ireland more in the end anyway. If large megacorporations will be as affected by this general trend as small business owners remains to be seen I guess - I'm not too optimistic about that.
- jokoon 9y agoI don't want to be too pessimistic, but I'm doubtful about those initiatives. Tax experts seem to be 10 steps ahead of legislators, not to mention lobbyists. I really want to believe that tax havens could be solved, but if you think about it, it's a very hard problem and nobody has enough political capital to solve it. Even people who are in power have little interest in trying to improve the situation, and I doubt that voters would really give any damn, not to mention that there are many small businesses who already benefit from tax havens too.