The EU has this afternoon issued deeply disappointing new guidance on the laws it expects member states to put in place to tackle tax evasion and money laundering through the use of limited companies and trusts.
An EU study had suggested that the best way to ensure that companies and trusts could not be used for money laundering abuse and tax evasion of the ort my research and that of others has shown to be possible was to put on public record the true beneficial ownership of those companies and who stood to really benefit from the trusts. The same report also said this was the most cost effective way to deal with this issue.
The EU has rejected this advice. It is only requiring that a company must itself prove who owns it, which is absurd: if it is being used for criminal purpose this requirement will simply be ignored! To say that this utterly misses the point of the demand for information is to massively understate the degree by which the EU has missed the mark on this issue.
Worse still, it seems that the new rules will not provide any effective mechanism for tackling those who assist tax evasion by the provision of professional services to companies used for that purpose.
I'm left, as is so often the case now, asking the obvious question of why it is that governments are so reluctant to take on the issue of tackling crime when tax crime is one of the biggest crime activities there is (costing the EU states about €850 billion a year) and the implications of it are apparent to all of us as Europe continues to face austerity that would be unnecessary if only the taxes that are due were paid.
It's a great afternoon for tax evaders. It's bad for all the rest of us.
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Who has cash to fund politicians? Tax evaders have more than most because they aren’t payng their taxes. Since most politicians these days are career politicians, in politics not from conviction but for personal advancement, they’re clearly going to be siding with the tax evaders (who have the money and can reward them) rather then the electorate, (who don’t and can’t). There’s no prospect of any political answer to this, therefore, unless the electorate can somehow make their presence felt beyond the communication afforded by the ballot box. I see trouble ahead, and justifiably so. How did the population make the poll tax go away? By rioting. When the effects of the bedroom tax and the overall benefit cap make themselves plain as far, far worse, I expect the resulting civil disobedience to be far worse in proportion. Perhaps then our politicians will be so concerned what history will say of them that they’ll turn on their benefactors and change the laws to support the interests of the majority. I’m not holding my breath though. I’m storing food and learning survival instead.
What Bill said.
The rot goes too deep now.
Richard, they are reluctant to tackle this because at the heart of it we would find the true ‘masters’ of the political-economic system – those who sit behind the boards of the world’s largest corporations and banks, hidden behind trusts and foundations. Any politician game enough to take this on will be undermined politically and failing that, assasinated (as I’m sure has happened, particularly in the 3rd World). These people will not deign to have the world look in on their private affairs (which is why they control most of the established media). So at the end of the day its up to the citizenry to put a lot of heat on these issues, using the social media and WWW to outmanoeuver them.
Simple answer? Because they don’t want to. They are beholden to the lobbyists, rather than to hte people who actually (or in their case, didn’t) vote them in!
They are there to indulge the interests of the elite. Any other consideration takes a back seat!