The UK has been attracting quite a bit of scrutiny of tax havens lately, particularly in regards to its overseas territories. The British Virgin Islands was actually the most frequently exploited tax haven in the now-infamous Panama Papers, with well over half of all corporate entities named in the papers registered there.
Numbers released by Statistics Canada reveal that Canadian businesses are increasingly moving to pull their funds from tax havens. The move marks the end of a five-year period in which Canadian businesses had billions stashed in the 10 most popular tax havens, which are defined as low-tax or no-tax countries.
Documents released last year reveal that former Trump aide Paul Manafort from the party of Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed former President, the Party of Regions, reportedly worked for Russian-leaning political organizations in the Ukraine for well over ten years before taking the help of Trump’s presidential campaign in the summer of 2016.
One year ago this month, a staggering 11.5 million documents known as the Panama Papers were leaked, igniting a global debate around tax havens.
The Australian government announced late last month that is has identified over 340 people that have unnamed Swiss bank accounts and allegedly have business relationships with Swiss banking officials known to have actively endorsed and enabled tax evasion and avoidance structures.
Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second largest bank, has recently found itself right in the middle of a major international tax evasion case.
According to the analysis conducted by ActionAid, the share of global investment moving through tax havens has increased – to the tune of about $700 billion in just two years.
In February, EU member states sent letters to more than 92 countries notifying them that they now will be screened to determine if they should be included on a new blacklist of tax havens.
The IRS announced that hiding assets or money in offshore accounts remains high on its 2017 list of tax scams, commonly known as the “Dirty Dozen.” This list points out a number of common scams that taxpayers use to avoid paying their fair share.
If a robot takes a person’s job, should that robot pay income taxes? It is a question that is increasingly being debated in relation to the impact of automation on employment, and many have suggested that such a tax could help to address inequality and alleviate the social and economic pressures wrought by the shift towards the automation of labor. But experts agree that there is not a clear-cut answer.