{"id":11531,"date":"2011-08-17T07:47:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T06:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=11531"},"modified":"2011-08-17T07:47:46","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T06:47:46","slug":"its-goodbye-switzerland-as-the-profits-from-tax-evasion-disappear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/08\/17\/its-goodbye-switzerland-as-the-profits-from-tax-evasion-disappear\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s goodbye Switzerland as the profits from tax evasion disappear"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/source\/2011\/08\/16\/the-migration-of-banks-from-former-tax-havens-begins\/\" target=\"_blank\">Wall Street Journal notes<\/a> this morning:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s time to move on to other shores for European banks serving wealthy clients: Switzerland will remain famous for its cheese but not for its banking secret anymore.<\/p>\n<p>Monday\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.abnamro.com\/en\/index.html\">ABN Amro<\/a>, the Netherlands\u2019 third biggest bank,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.abnamro.com\/en\/index.html\">announced the decision<\/a> to sell its private banking operations in Switzerland to local operator Union Bancaire Privee.<\/p>\n<p>The move can be seen as the start of a migration of smaller non-Swiss banks from a country which was the perfect place for tax evaders for decades.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And why are they doing that? The WSJ says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A recent Swiss-German tax deal is expected to increase the sector\u2019s costs by around CHF500 million, putting additional strain on many smaller and medium-sized banks in Switzerland and operations of non-Swiss banks as well.<\/p>\n<p>The tax-deal, as well as the strong Swiss franc against the euro, bites into profits because serving wealthy customers is expensive. \u00a0It looks more profitable to invest money in other places.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And as they note:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The timing for ABN Amro\u2019s move wasn\u2019t bad at all. Due to increasing costs in a still highly competitive market\u2014at least for now\u2014potential buyers are willing to pay reasonable prices to reach scale. Industry observers expect similar deals in the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Let's put that another way: these banks have always invested in tax evasion (as they continue toi do in tax havens around the world). And it's a cold,\u00a0calculated\u00a0decision to do so. As I and the\u00a0Tax Justice Network have always said.<\/p>\n<p>A greater admission of this fact could not be found.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the Wall Street Journal notes this morning: It\u2019s time to move on to other shores for European banks serving wealthy clients: Switzerland will remain<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2011\/08\/17\/its-goodbye-switzerland-as-the-profits-from-tax-evasion-disappear\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,16,80,63,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banking","category-ethics","category-secrecy-jurisdictions","category-switzerland","category-tax-evasion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}