Dow Jones has reported:
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Friday Bermuda has signed new tax information exchange agreements with eight national tax jurisdictions.
The move comes as pressure mounts on tax havens to increase their transparency and clamp down on tax evasion at a time when the finances of many countries around the world are under strain due to the financial crisis.
Bermuda has signed agreements with Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands, which is a self-governing region of Denmark, and New Zealand, the OECD said in a release.
Now let’s consider the population of these states (in millions, deatil added for Faroes and Greenland as they're so small):
| Denmark | 5.5 | |
| Sweden | 9.1 | |
| Finland | 5.3 | |
| Norway | 4.7 | |
| Greenland | 0.1 | 57,600 |
| Iceland | 0.3 | |
| Faroes | 0 | 48,856 |
| New Zealand | 4.2 | |
| Total | 29.2 | |
| World | 6,790 | |
| Proportion | 0.43% | |
Source: CIA Factbook
So, by signing agreements with governments representing 0.43% of the world’s population Bermuda gets 66% of the way to international acceptability on tax.
Which shows just how badly wrong the OECD got its tax haven listing.
Update:
By 4pm (2 hours after writing the above) Reusters had this out:
"By signing agreements with governments representing 0.43 percent of the world's population, Bermuda gets 66 percent of the way to international acceptability on tax," Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and a campaigner against tax evasion, said on his Tax Research blog. "Which shows just how badly wrong the OECD got its tax haven listing."
As they say - Greenland is a very popular place right now.
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What’s with Faroe Islands? Why are all tax havens doing TIAs with a villiage of fisherman and sheep farmers? The Government of Faroe Islands must be worried about fish export tax avoidance schemes… 😆
I don’t see that the population sizes are all that significant. This is all about money, not head counts of people, goats, or chickens.
For example, in Finland, I worked for this guy, although not for the company involved in tax fraud:
http://www2.hs.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20030515IE7
“Already last autumn, the total amount of compensation ordered by the Court of Appeal had topped EUR 47 million after the addition of interest.”
Finland claimed that he may have up to EUR 100 million is assets hidden around the world. Not proven however.
It’s a lot of money, and I don’t see any real connection between that and the population of Finland.
[…] Bermuda change in 8 years when no pressure was brought to bear on […]
Dan
Maybe coming from Jersey gives you a small world view
But if you can honestly think information exchange with places which combined have a population of just over 100,000 meets one sixth of a place’s target for information exchange agreements then you’re suffering real problems of comprehension on this issue
Richard
Richard, I may be Jersey born, but have lived and worked in other countries. I’m not a small world person, and look at issues from the wider perspective. I agree that many islanders are very inward facing, though.
I agree Bermuda’s efforts don’t go very far.
But, my point is that there may be a few individuals in these smaller places evading very substantial amounts of tax. The trouble with evasion is that it is mostly hidden, of course, so how does anyone know for certain where the problems lie?
Dan
let’s assume the problem could be in any country – not just a random 12
In that case why is 12 agreements enough?
Why not 120?
Your counter argument?
Richard