tweakabelle
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Lucylastic
According to the Boston Consulting Group, the amount of money involved is around $10 trillion.
These revelations should be read in conjunction with other reports analysing the offshore tax haven industry's size. One study has estimated the size of these funds to be at least $13 trillion and possibly as much as $20 trillion. Other reports estimate the size of funds hidden offshore at between $21-32 trillion, The Guardian reports:
"A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.
James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.
He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, “protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy”. According to Henry’s research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy
It all shows what a colossal con trick 'trickle down' economic policies (such as Trump's proposed tax changes in the US) are. The benefits of tax cuts to the wealthy do not 'trickle down' to less well off sectors of society, they are diverted into tax havens and outside the legitimate economies altogether.
It shows what a diversionary mockery the attacks on welfare 'bludgers' are - compared to the vast sums legally and illegally moved offshore to avoid tax.* The pitiful amounts gained by welfare fraud are measured in the thousands of dollars annually, the amount of tax evaded through the use of tax havens is measured in the trillions - not thousands, not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, not millions, not hundreds of millions, not billions or even hundreds of billions but trillions.
The numbers speak for themselves.
One can only imagine the enormity of social good that could be achieved by harnessing these funds for social good - eliminate unemployment, improved healthcare, debt removal, lower taxes and so on.
It has also been estimated that the beneficaries of this gigantic tax evasion number less than 30,000 individuals and corporations globally. This level of inequality on top of the evasions (both legal and illegal) is simply obscene and indefensible by any civilised standard.
* This is not to defend welfare fraud in any way. It simply points out that compared to the losses generated by offshore tax havens, the amounts lost due to welfare fraud are so small they are trivial.
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