Tax havens are not dead. This is proclaimed a platform for NGOs and actors of civil society, Tax Justice Network (TJN), releasing on Monday a list of alternative tax havens. To develop this new classification, the result of 18 months of work, the international network has developed an "index of financial opacity", composed of twelve points and takes into account the degree of secrecy of a state and its weight in international finance. Sixty states or territories and are listed in this ranking. In detail, the U.S. state of Delaware truste first place. The territory is accused of ensuring banking secrecy, not to hold public register of trusts (financial firms) and not sufficiently comply with international rules on taxation. Luxembourg and Switzerland on the podium.
The top five on the white list of OECD
The Cayman Islands take fourth place. The City of London (5th) suffers fewer areas of opacity, as the international network, but it does not keep the ultimate beneficiaries of public corporations and does not "appropriate access" to information bank. Hong Kong takes tenth place. For Tax Justice Network, "is probably in the Top Ten of opaque areas identified as focuses, globally, dirty money and that of tax evasion.
But surprisingly, the top five in this ranking are listed "white" virtuous countries of the Organization for Cooperation and Development (OECD). Of the top ten states in the list of NRT, only Singapore (8th) is still ranked in the gray list of the OECD.This new classification thus casts discredit on the lists prepared in April by the OECD, which refers, in Tax Justice Network, criteria inappropriate and insufficient. Note also that Europe is well represented since most of Luxembourg, Switzerland and the City of London, Ireland (7th), Belgium (9th), Austria (12th), the Netherlands Netherlands (15th), or the Portuguese island of Madeira (17th), all bleached also by the OECD are in the classification established by the Tax Justice Network.
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