{"id":21414,"date":"2013-06-30T18:17:40","date_gmt":"2013-06-30T17:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=21414"},"modified":"2013-06-30T18:17:40","modified_gmt":"2013-06-30T17:17:40","slug":"why-are-we-asking-the-british-tax-havens-to-reform-themselves-when-the-foreign-office-says-we-can-impose-new-law-on-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/06\/30\/why-are-we-asking-the-british-tax-havens-to-reform-themselves-when-the-foreign-office-says-we-can-impose-new-law-on-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are we asking the British tax havens to reform themselves when the Foreign Office says we can impose new law on them?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was rummaging through various links today and came to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/32952\/ot-wp-0612.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">UK Foreign Office White Paper on the\u00a0Overseas Territories\u00a0published\u00a0in June 2012<\/a>. This\u00a0contains, on\u00a0page\u00a014, the\u00a0following\u00a0interesting\u00a0statement in a section headed 'Our Constitutional Relationship':<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The UK, the Overseas Territories and the Crown\u00a0Dependencies form one undivided Realm, which is\u00a0distinct from the other States of which Her Majesty\u00a0The Queen is monarch. Each Territory has its own\u00a0Constitution and its own Government and has its\u00a0own local laws. As a matter of constitutional law\u00a0the UK Parliament has unlimited power to legislate\u00a0for the Territories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I would add that I can see noi difference in the case of the\u00a0Crown Dependencies.<\/p>\n<p>In that case let's be clear; there is no reason to ask the consent of these tax havens for\u00a0automatic information exchange,\u00a0transparency, documents on public record or\u00a0anything\u00a0else. We can just legislate that they will do these things and the reason why is clear:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Governors or Commissioners are\u00a0appointed by Her Majesty The Queen on the\u00a0advice of Her Ministers in the UK, and in general\u00a0have responsibility for external affairs, defence,\u00a0internal security (including the police) and the\u00a0appointment, discipline and removal of public\u00a0officers. Elected governments have a wide range\u00a0of responsibilities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Tax information exchange is quite\u00a0clearly\u00a0an issue of external affairs: the UK's tax havens are not\u00a0responsible\u00a0for it; the UK is. This White Paper makes quite\u00a0clear that local officials do not have\u00a0authority\u00a0on the issue. In that case it is time for the UK to act, now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was rummaging through various links today and came to the UK Foreign Office White Paper on the\u00a0Overseas Territories\u00a0published\u00a0in June 2012. This\u00a0contains, on\u00a0page\u00a014, the\u00a0following\u00a0interesting\u00a0statement in<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/06\/30\/why-are-we-asking-the-british-tax-havens-to-reform-themselves-when-the-foreign-office-says-we-can-impose-new-law-on-them\/\"><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":[77,22,4,6,7,80,10,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bermuda","category-cayman","category-guernsey","category-isle-of-man","category-jersey","category-secrecy-jurisdictions","category-tax-avoidance","category-tax-evasion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21414","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=21414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}