It's a curious fact that being a tax haven is becoming counter productive.

Ireland is a tax haven. It pioneered ring fences in the Shannon Free Zone, used tax to lure business to its shores and now offers the lowest corporate tax rate amongst the major economies in the EU. But all that it has succeeded in doing is make its resident population feel they are overtaxed. That's the difficulty of promoting tax haven activity. Once you make clear you allow abuse, your own people abuse you.

Now they're just fleeing Ireland as well, as an article in the Sunday Business Post showed. Called 'Tax havens lure super-rich' the article said:

Latest figures from the Revenue show the extent to which many Irish high rollers have chosen to base themselves abroad, writes Ian Kehoe.

They are the business elite of Ireland, but many are now opting to pay tax in other jurisdictions. From Malta to Bermuda and from Portugal to Gibraltar, Ireland's high rollers are relocating to low-tax destinations across the globe.

In itself this is an interesting use of language: note they are 'opting to pay tax in other jurisidctions'. Or not pay tax, of course, as the case may be. And as the paper notes, of the top 20 individuals on the Irish Rich List, at least half are tax resident outside Ireland. There too is a dichotomy. When are you Irish, in that case?

And as they also note:

In general, the most popular tax havens for Irish citizens are jurisdictions that have entered into a double taxation system with Ireland and where there is a lower rate of tax.

Which is precisely why places like Jersey, Cayman and more cannot be allowed the advantage of such treaties.

The article is worth a read: it's an interesting case study.