Extraordinary revelations by the Tax Justice Network that 98 of the FTSE 100 are located in tax havens. Indeed, the British companies make more use of tax havens than their American counterparts. According to the Tax Justice Network, the banking sector makes heaviest use of tax havens. There's a total of 1,649 tax haven companies between the 'big four' banks. British banks are by far the biggest users of the Cayman Islands, where Barclays alone has 174 companies. But the biggest tax haven user overall is the advertising company WPP which has 611 tax haven companies.
A conference in Paris organised by the Task Force on Financial Integrity has come up with a number of sensible proposals to crack down on this problem. Proposals include tackling transfer pricing where companies shift their profits across to low tax jurisdictions, forcing companies to reveal their sales, profits and taxes paid in every jurisdiction, cracking down on trusts, more co-operation between countries on the exchange of tax information and harmonizing money laundering rules. That would be a big start.
Nothing has been done yet. But you can bet that with deepening fiscal woes in the developed world, governments are now more likely to act because they desperately need more revenue. We can expect the pace of change to speed up.
no comment untill now