Alex Hawkes is spot on in Accountancy Age:

Trying to come up with justifications for offering rock bottom tax rates to lure business away from where it is really based is an interesting parlour game.

As he says, one justification is:

If, to use a not entirely fictitious example, a large retailer were to set up a financing arm in a Swiss canton, surely the low tax rate means they can do more, invest more, and create more jobs?

He says:

I'm sure such companies can achieve more, but the point is rather that it's something of an uneven field. Large multi-nationals end up with artificial advantages over their smaller, and possibly more efficient, competitors, driving out the best in favour of the largest.

And so he concludes:

The tax profession as a whole has a fairly businesslike approach to tax havens: they work with them, so they keep their mouths shut. But I bet most advisers are, privately at least, ethically doubtful about what is going on.

He's right I'm sure. It's just the cash that shuts them up, for now.

But the real point is this: all that Alex has written could just have easily been written on this blog. When your ideas begin to go mainstream you know you're making progress.

And don't doubt it: the days of the tax haven (or secrecy jurisdictions I'd rather call them) are numbered.