{"id":58888,"date":"2021-08-31T06:46:33","date_gmt":"2021-08-31T05:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=58888"},"modified":"2023-02-17T17:11:43","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T17:11:43","slug":"what-is-a-tax-haven-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2021\/08\/31\/what-is-a-tax-haven-3\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a tax haven?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"s3\"><span class=\"s2\">When I first began working on tax havens in the early years of this <\/span><span class=\"s2\">century<\/span><span class=\"s2\"> it quickly became very clear that there was no precise definition of what a tax haven might be, and little chance of agreeing on one. The reason <\/span><span class=\"s2\">wa<\/span><span class=\"s2\">s simple: there <\/span><span class=\"s2\">we<\/span><span class=\"s2\">re too many varieties of tax haven for one definition to cover all that they <\/span><span class=\"s2\">might <\/span><span class=\"s2\">do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"s3\"><span class=\"s2\">However, as I explain in this video, there was one characteristic that <\/span><span class=\"s2\">all the places that might have been called a tax haven <\/span><span class=\"s2\">seemed to have in common, and that was secrecy. What I realised was that without secrecy to hide their activities from scrutiny most of those using the paces usually called tax havens would not undertake activity there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"s3\"><span class=\"s2\">So, adapting the term secrecy jurisdiction that I had first heard used by the late <\/span><span class=\"s2\">US <\/span><span class=\"s2\">Senator Carl Levin, I changed the focus of attention when seeking to define these places away from tax <\/span><span class=\"s2\">and <\/span><span class=\"s2\">towards the secrecy that they almost always provide. The result was my definition of a secrecy jurisdiction, which has underpinned much of the progress on tackling these places since I first offered it in 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"s3\"><span class=\"s2\">I define secrecy jurisdictions as places that intentionally create regulation for the primary benefit and use of those not resident in their geographical domain with that regulation being designed to undermine the legislation or regulation of another jurisdiction and with the secrecy jurisdictions also creating a deliberate, legally backed veil of secrecy that ensures that those from outside the jurisdiction making use of its regulation cannot be identified to be doing so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"s3\"><span class=\"s2\">I explore this issue in this video.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"s3\"><span class=\"s2\">The paper in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Secrecyworld.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">which I redefined tax havens as secrecy jurisdictions<\/a> is here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"s3\">This is the first in a series of five videos on the theme of tax havens.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What is a Tax Haven?\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bTZxIBILw9M?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I first began working on tax havens in the early years of this century it quickly became very clear that there was no precise<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2021\/08\/31\/what-is-a-tax-haven-3\/\"><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":[67,26,14,35,16,80,10,55,32,97,194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountancy","category-accounting","category-corruption","category-economics","category-ethics","category-secrecy-jurisdictions","category-tax-avoidance","category-tax-evasion","category-tax-havens","category-tax-justice","category-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58888","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=58888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}