Off Shore Tax Avoiders in the Spot Light

Paradise Papers

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has released a collection of articles on global tax avoiders called the "Paradise Papers." They look at strategies corporations like Apple, very rich people like Wilbur Ross or public figures like the Queen of England use to minimize their taxes.

The OCED estimate that tax avoidance costs governments around the world up to $240 Billion dollars a year.

The exposure of the super-rich tax avoiders is a good way to build support for cracking down on these tax cheaters. All of us honest taxpayers have subsidized these tax avoiders for too long. Mixed into the money from these tax avoiders is money from drug dealers, kleptocrats, greedy corporations, and oligarchics. It is passed through shell companies and hidden by legal foreign and domestic secrecy laws.

People are realizing how much damage this missing tax revenue does to the real economy.

1) Tax avoiders cheat all of us. They make us all pay more for education, cops, schools, roads, military and social programs.
2) The show there is no need for a corporate tax cut as proposed by the Trump administration and the US republicans. Nor should there be a lower rate on the repatriation of foreign profits. If anything, a tax cut will force other jurisdictions to lower their own taxes.
3) States and nations have to work together to stop tax rate shopping by companies
4) The US and the UK are the biggest sponsors of tax avoidance.

Tax avoidance issues previously arose in 2015 when Google, Apple and Starbucks reported close to zero taxes on more than $200 billion in income. The EU is in court seeking to force Ireland to collect back taxes from Apple.

The US also practices tax avoidance. Delaware is the largest US tax haven

https://qz.com/656998/if-you-think-panama-is-bad-wait-until-you-hear-about-delaware/

Delaware generates about a quarter of it's $4 billion dollar budget from business fees. Last year they earn $976 million in fees, while letting companies avoid much larger tax bills.

http://budget.delaware.gov/budget/fy2017/documents/operating/vol1/budget-book.pdf