There is No Moral Case for Tax Havens

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/28-1

There is a building in the Cayman Islands that is home to 12,000 corporations. It must be a very big building. Or a very big tax scam. Tax havens are in the spotlight since the Chancellor, George Osborne, did a deal the other day with the Swiss authorities to slap a levy on secret bank accounts held there by British citizens. Opinions are divided on the move, which could net the Treasury £5bn, but which tacitly legitimizes bank accounts kept secret from the Inland Revenue. It is a de facto amnesty for those guilty of tax evasion crimes. And they will pay less than they would if they declared their income to the British taxman.



Are there any legitimate reasons why anyone would want to have a secret bank account – and pay a premium to maintain their anonymity – or move their money to one of the pink dots on the map which are the final remnants of the British empire: the Caymans, Bermuda, the Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands?

The moral case against is clear enough. Tax havens epitomize unfairness, cheating and injustice. They replace the old morality embodied in the Golden Rule of reciprocity – that we should do as we would be done by – with a new version that insists that those who have the gold make the rules.

The old view, the neocon American Christopher Caldwell wrote recently, subscribes to a religious understanding of money that was universal in the Christian world before the rise of Protestantism, which acknowledges that people are alive but money is not, making it wrong for the latter to take precedence over the former – a notion as outdated as usury, he suggested tartly.

More at the link --

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Similar Post

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x623930 Both point to the same seminal source: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/paul-vallely-there-is-no-moral-case-for-tax-havens-2345096.html



The real issue is taxation on wealth vice income. The US requires you declare foreign deposits over a certain value, but not foreign property or assets. You have to declare income received, regardless of source. Other nations, like the UK may tax you on cash assets which makes the secret accounts a much bigger deal.