Financial Secrecy Index
The Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) is a report published by the advocacy organization Tax Justice Network (TJN) which ranks countries by ''financial secrecy indicators'', weighted by the economic flows of each country. It looks at how wealthy individuals and criminals can hide and launder money using the country's legal and financial systems. Automatic information interchange and beneficial ownership registration were among the ranking criteria. According to TJN, an estimated US$21 to US$32 trillion in untaxed or minimally taxed private financial wealth is held in secrecy jurisdictions (tax havens) around the world. It is a measure of each jurisdiction's contribution to the worldwide problem of financial secrecy that combines qualitative and quantitative data. To create a secrecy score for each jurisdiction, qualitative data based on laws, regulations, cooperation with information exchange mechanisms, and other verified data sources is used. The secrecy countries with the h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tax Justice Network
The Tax Justice Network (or TJN) is an advocacy group consisting of a coalition of researchers and activists with a shared concern about tax avoidance, tax competition, and tax havens. Empirical results The TJN has reported on the OECD Base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) projects and conducted their own research that the scale of corporate taxes being avoided by multinationals is an estimated $660bn in 2012 (a quarter of US multinationals’ gross profits), which is equivalent to 0.9% of World GDP. In July 2012, following a study into wealthy individuals with offshore accounts, the Tax Justice Network published claims regarding deposits worth at least $21 trillion (£13 trillion), potentially even $32 trillion, in secretive tax havens. As a result, governments suffer a lack of income taxes of up to $280 billion. In November 2020, the TJN published "The State of Tax Justice 2020" report. It claims $427 billion is lost every year to tax abuse. Focus Financial Secrecy Index ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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EU Illegal State Aid Case Against Apple In Ireland
On 29 August 2016, after a two-year investigation, Margrethe Vestager of the European Commission announced: "Ireland granted illegal tax benefits to Apple". The Commission ordered Apple to pay €13 billion, plus interest, in unpaid Irish taxes from 2004–14 to the Irish state. It was the largest corporate tax "fine" (in fact a recovery order, technically not a fine) in history. On 7 September 2016, the Irish State secured a majority in Dáil Éireann to reject payment of the back-taxes, which including penalties could reach €20 billion, or 10% of 2014 Irish GDP. In November 2016, the Irish government formally appealed the ruling, claiming there was no violation of Irish tax law, and that the commission's action was "an intrusion into Irish sovereignty", as national tax policy is excluded from EU treaties. In November 2016, Apple CEO Tim Cook, announced Apple would appeal, and in September 2018, Apple lodged €13 billion to an escrow account, pending appeal. In Ju ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Offshore Finance
An offshore financial centre (OFC) is defined as a "country or jurisdiction that provides financial services to nonresidents on a scale that is incommensurate with the size and the financing of its domestic economy." "Offshore" does not refer to the location of the OFC, since many Financial Stability Forum– IMF OFCs, such as Delaware, South Dakota, Singapore, Luxembourg and Hong Kong, are located "onshore", but to the fact that the largest users of the OFC are non-resident, i.e. "offshore". The IMF lists OFCs as a third class of financial centre, with international financial centres (IFCs), and regional financial centres (RFCs); there is overlap (e.g. Singapore is an RFC and an OFC). The Caribbean, including the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda, has several major OFCs, facilitating many billions of dollars worth of trade and investment globally. During April–June 2000, the Financial Stability Forum–International Monetary Fund produced the first l ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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International Taxation
International taxation is the study or determination of tax on a person or business subject to the tax laws of different countries, or the international aspects of an individual country's tax laws as the case may be. Governments usually limit the scope of their income taxation in some manner territorially or provide for offsets to taxation relating to extraterritorial income. The manner of limitation generally takes the form of a territorial, residence-based, or exclusionary system. Some governments have attempted to mitigate the differing limitations of each of these three broad systems by enacting a hybrid system with characteristics of two or more. Many governments tax individuals and/or enterprises on income. Such systems of taxation vary widely, and there are no broad general rules. These variations create the potential for double taxation (where the same income is taxed by different countries) and no taxation (where income is not taxed by any country). Income tax systems m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Global Issues
A global issue is a matter of public concern worldwide. This list of global issues presents problems or phenomena affecting people around the world, including but not limited to widespread social issues, economic issues, and environmental issues. Organizations that maintain or have published an official list of global issues include the United Nations, and the World Economic Forum. Global catastrophic risks Not all of these risks are independent, because the majority, if not all of them are a result of human activity. * Biodiversity loss * Climate change * Destructive artificial intelligence * Environmental disaster * Nuclear holocaust * Pandemic ** current example: COVID-19 pandemic * Biotechnology risk * Molecular nanotechnology United Nations list The UN has listed issues that it deems to be the most pressing as of 2015: As part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UN Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015) were superseded by the UN Sustainable Devel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Finance Lists
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of financial economics bridges the two). Finance activities take place in financial systems at various scopes, thus the field can be roughly divided into personal, corporate, and public finance. In a financial system, assets are bought, sold, or traded as financial instruments, such as currencies, loans, bonds, shares, stocks, options, futures, etc. Assets can also be banked, invested, and insured to maximize value and minimize loss. In practice, risks are always present in any financial action and entities. A broad range of subfields within finance exist due to its wide scope. Asset, money, risk and investment management aim to maximize value and minimize volatility. Financial analysis is viability, stability, and profitability ass ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Corporate Tax Avoidance
Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxes. Tax avoidance should not be confused with tax evasion, which is illegal. Forms of tax avoidance that use legal tax laws in ways not necessarily intended by the government are often criticized in the court of public opinion and by journalists. Many corporations and businesses that take part in the practice experience a backlash from their active customers or online. Conversely, benefiting from tax laws in ways that were intended by governments is sometimes referred to as tax planning. The World Bank's World Development Report 2019 on the future of work supports increased government efforts to curb tax avoidance as part of a new social contract focused on human capital investments and expanded social pro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United States As A Tax Haven
In 2010, the United States implemented the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act; the law required financial firms around the world to report accounts held by US citizens to the Internal Revenue Service. The US on the other hand refused the Common Reporting Standard set up by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, alongside Vanuatu and Bahrain. This means the US receives tax and asset information for American assets and income abroad, but does not share information about what happens in the United States with other countries. In other words, it has become attractive as a tax haven. Extent The Tax Justice Network ranks the US third in terms of the secrecy and scale of its offshore financial industry, behind Switzerland and Hong Kong but ahead of the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg. The United States has been popular as a destination for offshore funds for Chinese investors, said Canadian financial crimes expert Bill Majcher, because investors think it wi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Offshore Financial Centre
An offshore financial centre (OFC) is defined as a "country or jurisdiction that provides financial services to nonresidents on a scale that is incommensurate with the size and the financing of its domestic economy." "Offshore" does not refer to the location of the OFC, since many Financial Stability Forum– IMF OFCs, such as Delaware, South Dakota, Singapore, Luxembourg and Hong Kong, are located "onshore", but to the fact that the largest users of the OFC are non-resident, i.e. "offshore". The IMF lists OFCs as a third class of financial centre, with international financial centres (IFCs), and regional financial centres (RFCs); there is overlap (e.g. Singapore is an RFC and an OFC). The Caribbean, including the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda, has several major OFCs, facilitating many billions of dollars worth of trade and investment globally. During April–June 2000, the Financial Stability Forum–International Monetary Fund produced the first l ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ireland As A Tax Haven
Ireland has been labelled as a tax haven or corporate tax haven in multiple financial reports, an allegation which the state has rejected in response. Ireland is on all academic " tax haven lists", including the , and tax NGOs. Ireland does not meet the 1998 OECD definition of a tax haven, but no OECD member, including Switzerland, ever met this definition; only Trinidad & Tobago met it in 2017. Similarly, no EU–28 country is amongst the 64 listed in the 2017 EU tax haven blacklist and greylist. In September 2016, Brazil became the first G20 country to "blacklist" Ireland as a tax haven. Ireland's base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) tools give some foreign corporates ' of 0% to 2.5% on global profits re-routed to Ireland via their tax treaty network. Ireland's ''aggregate '' for foreign corporates is 2.2–4.5%. Ireland's BEPS tools are the world's largest BEPS flows, exceed the entire Caribbean system, and artificially inflate the US–EU trade deficit. Ireland's tax ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Corporate Tax Haven
Corporate haven, corporate tax haven, or multinational tax haven is used to describe a jurisdiction that multinational corporations find attractive for establishing subsidiaries or incorporation of regional or main company headquarters, mostly due to favourable tax regimes (not just the headline tax rate), and/or favourable secrecy laws (such as the avoidance of regulations or disclosure of tax schemes), and/or favourable regulatory regimes (such as weak data-protection or employment laws). Unlike traditional tax havens, modern corporate tax havens reject they have anything to do with near-zero effective tax rates, due to their need to encourage jurisdictions to enter into bilateral tax treaties which accept the haven's base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) tools. CORPNET show each corporate tax haven is strongly connected with specific traditional tax havens (via additional BEPS tool "backdoors" like the double Irish, the dutch sandwich, and single malt). Corporate tax h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Murphy (tax Campaigner)
Richard Murphy (born 21 March 1958) is a British chartered accountant and political economist who campaigns on issues of tax avoidance and tax evasion. He advises the Trades Union Congress on economics and taxation, and founded the Tax Justice Network. He is a Professor of Accounting Practice at University of Sheffield Management School. Early life Richard Murphy was born in 1958 and brought up in Ipswich. His undergraduate degree was in Economics and Accountancy at the University of Southampton, and further trained at KPMG becoming a Chartered Accountant. Career For much of his early career he was an accountant in Downham Market, Norfolk. In 1985 he co-founded an accountancy firm which became Murphy Deeks Nolan. The company was sold in 2000. Murphy was also the founder of a company that became the European distributor for the game Trivial Pursuit. Murphy has since admitted that the manufacturing operation he set up in Ireland to manufacture Trivial Pursuit was there to avoid ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |