I am well aware that many of my critics like to say I know little about anything. Unsurprisingly I don't agree. What I do know is that I very definitely know something about tax havens. My book on the subject with Ronen Palan and Christian Chavagneux is in academic publishing terms a best seller.
And there is something I could have told the EU before it published a list of tax havens, which is that this is a futile exercise.
The list is glaringly obviously incomplete: Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Malta, Cyprus, the UK and Belgium are not on it.
Nor are Jersey, Mauritius, the Isle of Man and maybe Delaware.
That makes it useless because no one thinks it is definitive but is instead a political sop.
And as a result some of those on there, such as Guernsey, are making a lot of noise about the injustice of being so.
I suppose that creates media attention for a day or so, but after that, so what? The world has not changed when we need it to move on.
If the EU had wanted to make a move it should have defined tax havens as secrecy jurisdictions, which long ago I defined as places that intentionally create regulation for the primary benefit and use of those not resident in their geographical domain with that regulation being designed to undermine the legislation or regulation of another jurisdiction and with the secrecy jurisdictions also creating a deliberate, legally backed veil of secrecy that ensures that those from outside the jurisdiction making use of its regulation cannot be identified to be doing so.
And then it should have used the only credible listing of such places that there is, which is the Tax Justice Network Financial Secrecy Index.
That would have made sense because a rational basis for discussion on needed from to break the secrecy that this index address and which is the EU's concern would have existed. But what has happened does not make sense, at all because there is no rational logic to it, and that helps no one.
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Your opening needs editing
Thanks
No coffee before that one!
If it is the only credible listing, why don’t you use the Financial Secrecy Index as part of the Fair Tax Pledge?
On the one had you say the ommission of certain countries from the EU list means it is “glaringly obviously incomplete” yet on the other hand, three of the top ten on the FSI are missing from your tax haven list from the Fair Tax Pledge.
Does that mean the Fair Tax Pledge list of tax havens is also “glaringly obviously incomplete”?
We do exactly use the FSI in the Fair Tax Pledge
Somewhere there has to be a cut off
We exactly specify where
You’re really not very good at nitpicking, are you?
So the EU list is
“glaringly obviously incomplete: Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Malta, Cyprus, the UK and Belgium are not on it”
But the Fair Tax Pledge list is fine even though the Netherlands, Malta, Cyprus the UK and Belgium are not on it?
Why are you critcising the EU for omitting countries, the omission of which you are obviously fine about on the FTP list?
You may call that nit-picking, most people would call it an absurdly inconsistent stance.
Sue
First, this is you last comment. I presume you are a paid troublemaker by nitpicking
Second, if you really do not realise that there can be different lists for different purposes then you really are time wasting
Third, you ignore the fact that I offer evidence in both cases
To be polite, I am bored by you
And as editor I have much better things to do with my life
So thank you and goodbye
Richard
Richard, I wasn’t sure if you realised that the EU hasn’t really devised this list itself. It’s simply looked at which countries are blacklisted by at least 10 EU Member States. So the list is of very little value.
I do agree – and know that
At one time this might have made sense
Now it is a known failed strategy
Especially when done on such dodgy bases