Tax Justice Network: The non-perils of information exchange.

Nick Shaxson at TJN has written a rigorous rebuttal of the claim that Automatic Information Exchange (AIE) will cause harm to people in developing countries. Amongst the arguments:

Certain think tanks have attacked TJN for proposing transparency and tax compliance, with one group of them arguing that we are putting at risk millions of people including “Jews in France, or homosexuals in Saudi Arabia" by threatening their privacy. Really? We are not aware of a single transparency campaigner, street protestor, anti-corruption campaigner, trade union official, investigative journalist, or dissident of any kind who has been protected from oppression by virtue of having a secret bank account or offshore trust. On the contrary, we can name any number of their oppressors — Augusto Pinochet, Obiang Nguema or Sani Abacha come to mind here — who use and have used secrecy jurisdictions extensively to preserve their power and wealth at the expense of their millions of victims.

Absolutely.

Read the rest. It is compelling.