Tax Havens

Multinational corporations use highly complex structures of parents and subsidiaries to organize their operations and ownership. Offshore Financial Centers (OFCs) facilitate these structures through low taxation and lenient regulation, but are increasingly under scrutiny, for instance for enabling tax avoidance. Therefore, the identification of OFC jurisdictions has become a politicized and contested issue. We introduce a novel data-driven approach for identifying OFCs based on the global corporate ownership network, in which over 98 million firms (nodes) are connected through 71 million ownership relations. This granular firm-level network data uniquely allows identifying both sink-OFCs and conduit-OFCs. Sink-OFCs attract and retain foreign capital while conduit-OFCs are attractive intermediate destinations in the routing of international investments and enable the transfer of capital without taxation. We identify 24 sink-OFCs. In addition, a small set of five countries – the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore and Switzerland – canalize the majority of corporate offshore investment as conduit-OFCs. Each conduit jurisdiction is specialized in a geographical area and there is significant specialization based on industrial sectors. Against the idea of OFCs as exotic small islands that cannot be regulated, we show that many sink and conduit-OFCs are highly developed countries.

Publisher: New Statesman
Author: Kevin Cahill
Date: Mar. 17, 2011
http://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2011/03/land-queen-world-australia

land ownership, property, wealth, tax havens, tax cheats, British monarchy, The Queen, tax avoidance, landlords and feudalism, feudal land ownership

Despite its reputation for the toughest anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement in the world, the United States remains the leading jurisdiction for the incorporation of anonymous shell companies used in grand corruption schemes. States like Delaware and Nevada have become notorious secrecy jurisdictions, frequently used by criminals and kleptocrats for money laundering. This thesis investigates why some U.S. states and not others have become the most secretive incorporation jurisdictions in the world. By employing the metrics from corporate secrecy scholars and NGOs and never-before-collected cross-sectional data on U.S. state incorporation fee revenue, this work reveals the correlates of U.S. state corporate secrecy. Moreover, through an interest group analysis of the corporate policymaking of two states (Delaware and Nevada) it posits a causal logic behind corporate secrecy in the most secretive U.S. states. It highlights how pro-secrecy interests in the United States have gained control over incorporation policymaking in Delaware and Nevada.

El articulo esboza brevemente por que la filtracion de documentos de los Panama Papers y la utilizacion selectiva de esos datos por parte de los medios masivos internacionales de comunicacion -tal como es presentada usualmente- puede afectar muy poco a las Redes de Guaridas Fiscales (RGF) implicadas o a sus verdaderos beneficiarios y si, en cambio, poner en serio riesgo a las soberanias nacionales y a las dirigencias politicas e instituciones democraticas de la mayoria de los paises del mundo. Adicionalmente se expone la desnudez en que se encuentra la Argentina, luego de los cambios legales del ano 2013, respecto de los aspectos nocivos de las actividades economicas y financieras relacionadas con la RGF.

This study aims to examine the incentives of multinational enterprises (MNEs) for setting up tax -haven subsidiaries. Based on the firm-specific advantage–country-specific advantage (FSA–CSA) framework, we have conducted our research hypotheses. Using a sample of 165 MNEs from six emerging countries spanning the years 2014-2016, we document that firms with greater investments in intangible assets have a higher likelihood of owning subsidiaries in tax havens. Concerning the home-country specific advantages, we provide evidence that firms are more likely to set up tax-haven subsidiaries when their home country has lower required book-tax conformity and a worldwide-tax system. With respect to the host-country advantages, we show that the lowest corporate-tax rate usually offered by tax havens constitutes a motivation for foreign MNEs to establish tax-haven subsidiaries. In summary, our findings indicate that firm's home-country tax system characteristics (a worldwide tax system, bo...

La filtración de documentos confidenciales pertenecientes a 14 entidades especializadas en la creación de sociedades en paraísos fiscales ha revelado la existencia de una industria enfocada a ocultar la riqueza de un grupo de personas: ofrecen anonimato y baja o nula tributación. Los documentos retratan también a los clientes de esta industria y a los intermediarios que les sirven de puente para acceder a estos servicios.

In this article, I bring ontological anthropology into a register that is recognizably political and critical in orientation. My intention is to apply the powerful conceptual approach of the “ontological turn” in order to address a contemporary politico-economic problem of acute importance: offshore finance. Drawing from archival and ethnographic data collected in Luxembourg, I argue that officials from this country’s offshore financial center have employed ontology in particular ways in the service of a drastically imbalanced global capitalist system. In doing so, I contend that anthropologists are not the only people at present engaged in an “ontological turn”; so too are the thousands of bankers, lawyers, fund administrators, and accountants currently at work in Luxembourg. Thus, in exposing anthropologists to a set of concurrent “ontologies,” I move away from how the turn’s proponents within the discipline have to date thought of their ontological explorations as pointing to a somehow more desirable and progressive future.

Abstract
2016 highlited by Panama Papers as the biggest scandalous tax havens report in all over the country. Their report contribute into country initiation in tax contribution and tax evasion criminalization. Their report highlight and offer new concept of tax havens by providing the new definition in offshore utilization as a part of tax havens scheme. Hence this thesis focused on UK and BVI (British Virgin Islands) relations on how they form mutual relations in tax havens network and give a detrimental effect toward tax contribution. This research focusing on how hegemonic country preserved their relations with their former colony into one affiliation, and aims on how harmful London curbs their former colony as a part of their offshore nexus in tax havens.
Keywords: Offshore, tax havens, United Kingdom, Panama Papers.

In Sociology, inequality is discussed under categories of labour-capital relations, social closure, types of capital, dominance, capabilities, in a vast number of empirical studies and much more. The role of taxes and public finance is often regarded as subsidiary. As historical studies show, the extension of public finance by the implementation of collective assurance and tax systems paralleled the emergence of modern welfare states. Using the example of post war Germany, Wolfgang Streeck distinguishes the period of the " tax state " , the " debt state " and the " consolidation state ". The welfare state coincides with the tax state and is increasingly questioned. Susan Strange emphasizes the role of international capital markets and transnational companies, allowing international actors to misuse the scope of action in overlapping tax systems to avoid taxes (Piciotto 1999). Up to recently developing countries lose high amounts of capital because of tax avoidance and evasion. On average, multinational companies pay increasingly lower taxes than the official rates, even in rich countries. As corporate taxation is related to other forms of taxation, especially of capital, financial structures are expected to change. Although tax avoidance and evasion are often framed in national categories and jurisdictions, structures of the offshore economy only partly go back to national interests. From the beginning of the extension of tax systems in the 19 th century, political authorities designed tax systems containing loopholes for the benefit of elites. Tax systems – either on the regional, national or international level – reflect power relation in the time of their installation, namely power within a society and between states. The paper takes out the case study of the Austrian banking secrecy to trace flows of capital, the role of elites and consequences for public finance and the welfare state in typical cases.

Multinational corporations use highly complex structures of parents and subsidiaries to organize their operations and ownership. Offshore Financial Centers (OFCs) facilitate these structures through low taxation and lenient regulation, but are increasingly under scrutiny, for instance for enabling tax avoidance. Therefore, the identification of OFC jurisdictions has become a politicized and contested issue. We introduce a novel data-driven approach for identifying OFCs based on the global corporate ownership network, in which over 98 million firms (nodes) are connected through 71 million ownership relations. This granular firm-level network data uniquely allows identifying both sink-OFCs and conduit-OFCs. Sink-OFCs attract and retain foreign capital while conduit-OFCs are attractive intermediate destinations in the routing of international investments and enable the transfer of capital without taxation. We identify 24 sink-OFCs. In addition, a small set of five countries - the Nethe...

Der Begriff der Steueroase erweckt Vorstellungen von schwer erreichbaren Sehnsuchtsorten. Genauer und technisch betrachtet handelt es sich jedoch um Rechtssysteme, die Steuerpflichtige und Finanzdienstleister*innen von regulären Finanzplätzen aus im Rahmen multinationaler Planungsstrategien nutzen. In diesem Beitrag verdeutliche ich zwei Aspekte: erstens, dass die Grenzen zwischen Steueroasen und regulären Finanzplätzen in bestimmten Fällen fließend sind. Auch als reguläre Finanzplätze geltende Staaten haben Gesetze, mittels derer die Regulierungen anderer Jurisdiktionen umgangen werden können – ein zentrales Merkmal von Offshore-Ökonomie. Steueroasen benötigen wiederum regulierte Staaten als ein Außen, da ihr Geschäftsmodell auf der Unterbietung der Standards anderer Länder beruht. Der Begriff der Steueroase ist umkämpft. Wo die Grenzen zwischen legalen sowie illegalen Transaktionen liegen und welche Jurisdiktionen als Steueroasen eingestuft werden, lässt in konkreten Fällen Raum für Interpretationen, der insbesondere von aktiven und mächtigen Akteur*innen ausgedeutet wird.
Zweitens möchte ich erläutern, wie irreführend es ist, Steueroasen nur in nationalen Kategorien als zwischenstaatliches Problem zu diskutieren. Die Konfliktlinie verläuft schließlich nicht nur zwischen Staaten und privatwirtschaftlichen Akteur*innen. Die Interessenkonstellation ist deutlich komplexer: Die Effekte von Steueroasen treffen verschiedene Gruppen innerhalb einer Gesellschaft in unterschiedlicher Weise und begünstigen insbesondere finanzstarke Akteur*innen, die auch mit Regierungen kooperieren. Insofern lösen Steueroasen eine Spirale der Besteuerung nach unten aus; Regulierungen stehen in einem Spannungsfeld von Kooperation und Standortkonkurrenz. Dabei verwenden privilegierte Akteur*innen das Standortargument auch politisch, um etwaige Gesetzgebungen zum eigenen Vorteil zu nutzen und zu gestalten.

Publicado en:
https://www.latindadd.org/2017/03/17/mira-que-paises-en-la-region-luchan-contra-las-guaridas-fiscales/

Introducción
El presente documento pretende brindar una guía para los especialistas que quieran
abordar la cuestión de las “Listas negras” de “Guaridas Fiscales” (LGF) en trece países
latinoamericanos1 y que desean tener acceso a un mapeo de las intrincadas y dispersas
normas que definen a estas LGF y las consecuencias de estar en ellas o, en el caso
de algunos de los países analizados, las normas relacionadas con la ausencia de las
mismas, o con “listas blancas”.
En el prefacio del capítulo II se relata cuál es el objetivo del presente documento,
cómo surgió en el autor la idea de realizar el proyecto de investigación marco que
se inicia con este primer trabajo, cómo se consiguió el apoyo de las Organizaciones
auspiciantes para la propuesta y cuáles podrían ser los pasos siguientes del proyecto.
En el capítulo III, se hace una descripción de algunos de los alcances y limitaciones
del documento, complementando los ya esbozados en el prefacio y en el marco de
algunas de las ventajas y desventajas de realizar la investigación desde fuera de las
estructuras estatales, con financiamiento proveniente de ONGs internacionales.
En el capítulo IV se inicia el análisis detallado por países, comenzando por el grupo
de seis países que cuentan con algún tipo de LGF: Brasil2, Colombia, Ecuador, El
Salvador, México y Perú. Si bien todos los países presentan igual relevancia para
los efectos del análisis, por cuestiones de limitación de recursos se expondrá con
mayor detalle la génesis y estado actual de las listas de Brasil y México ya que son las
mayores economías de Latinoamérica y representan el 33% y 21%, respectivamente,
de la población de la región.
Se pondrá especial atención al caso de Ecuador debido a que, más allá de su normativa
interna, es un país cuyo presidente tiene, en el presente, considerable protagonismo
en la promoción de acciones internacionales para luchar contra la “Red de Guaridas
Fiscales”.
En el capítulo V se describe el caso de Argentina, que es el único país de los trece
analizados que ha cambiado su “Lista negra” de “Paraísos fiscales”3 por una “Lista
blanca” de “Jurisdicciones Cooperantes” en cuya versión 2016 se encuentran más de
la mitad de las “Guaridas Fiscales” que estuvieron en la “Lista Negra” merced al solo
hecho de haber firmado un Convenio de Intercambio de Información o incluso estar
negociando su firma (como es el caso de Panamá4). El caso de Argentina se presenta interesante interesante para el análisis no solo porque es el tercer país de la región en
términos económicos y el cuarto en población (luego de Brasil, México y Colombia)
sino porque además su cambio de 180 grados en la política referente al tratamiento
de las “Guaridas Fiscales” es un precedente muy peligroso para la región al estar
supuestamente reflejando los dictados de la OCDE.
En el capítulo VI se hace un breve análisis de los países que no cuentan con normativas
de “Lista negra” o semejantes en relación con las “Guaridas Fiscales” o que, contando
con normativa que las prevé, no han avanzado en establecerlas efectivamente,
como es el caso de Nicaragua y Honduras.
En el capítulo VII se exponen algunas conclusiones.
Finalmente se menciona bibliografía consultada y sugerida en relación al tema de
“Guaridas Fiscales”, la lista de siglas y acrónimos, un Anexo final con los listados
detallados publicados por los países analizados respecto de las “Guaridas Fiscales”
en sus diversas denominaciones, algunos listados complementarios referidos a la temática
de “Guaridas Fiscales” y “listas negras” o “listas grises” de ONGs, bibliografía
especializada y organismos nacionales no tributarios u Organismos Internacionales.

Globalisation is based on the notion that economies focus their resources on goods and services where they have a competitive advantage. Tariffs, it argues should be removed so that the state can do what it does best and then trade around the globe for products others do better.
This article looks at tax havens and asks why this rule does not apply to the Cayman Islands, to Jersey and to Switzerland et al. Why do we get so hot under the collar about these jurisdictions exploiting their competitive advantage in a global market where the service they provide is legal? Surely to be pro globalisation you must be pro tax havens. It also considers some of the drawbacks and how they might be resolved and the societal implications of these havens.

Tax havens and tax avoidance have gathered much interest, e.g., in the United Nations (UN) negotiations on the post-2015 development goals. The analyses of initiatives against corporate tax avoidance typically focus on developments from the mid-1990s onward. This article shows that contrary to the common perception, the country-by-country reporting initiative and many of the other contemporary policy responses had already been developed and discussed in the 1970s by the United Nations Commission and Centre for Transnational Corporations. I demonstrate how the weakening of the policy community of the UN and the failure of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to refer to the earlier discussions, not only in the UN but also in the OECD, contributed to the passing into oblivion of these ideas. Other factors were the reframing of the UN work on multinational enterprises to human rights issues and the transformation of academic theories of the firm. The examples demonstrate how ideas shape world politics and how the oblivion of certain ideas can have concrete impacts on the power relations between its actors. The oblivion of the earlier debates paved the way for the triumph of more business-friendly discourses centred on the anti-corruption and corporate social responsibility arguments.

In April 2009, the G20 pledged to end ‘the era of banking secrecy’. A few short months later Angel Gurria, the OECD Secretary General, boasted of the organisation orchestrating just such a ‘revolution’ in global tax transparency. This and a series of similarly upbeat comments subsequently with accounts variously deriding the initiative as ‘futile’,’ a sham’ and ‘a sad joke’ whose ‘creeping futility’ has served only to legitimise tax avoidance. Many accounts suggest that these problems derive from the OECD’s inability (or unwillingness) to develop a standard requiring automatic information exchange. This paper argues that while automatic information exchange is vital if the OECD regime is ever to clampdown on tax avoidance it will be pointless unless it also addresses the problem of ‘mock compliance’, whereby states pursue the form but not the substance of compliance, that has plagued the initiative throughout. For example, in previous iterations of the regime states the OECD regarded as compliant providing they had provided the necessary legislative framework for information exchange but did not investigate whether such frameworks were effectively implemented. The OECD has sought to eradicate this problem with a new enhanced peer review system which more thoroughly examines a jurisidiction’s ability to collect the necessary information and to exchange it upon request. Over 110 jurisdictions now participate in the OECD’s Global Forum signifying that states, including many without significant financial centres, seem to have arrived at the conclusion that the material or reputational costs flowing from outright defiance of the OECD far exceed the benefits. Nevertheless, full compliance of the OECD would entail greater costs, especially amongst powerful domestic interests upon whom those costs disproportionately fall. The paper argues that the OECD’s enhanced peer review mechanism does not sufficiently raise the costs of non-compliance (mainly because it cannot ascertain levels of compliance with any certainty) and that states will continue to engage in mock compliance to appease powerful domestic concerns.

This article examines the relationship between nationalistic mobilisations, hidden funds and undisclosed campaign contributions, commonly known as dark money. Contextualising Brexit alongside the Icelandic economic crash of 2008 shows how nationalist mobilisation and racism can secure economic and political interests for a small minority and thus create space for what Zygmunt Bauman has called ‘evasion’ or ‘slippage’ as a primary technique of power in the present. Both the build-up to Brexit and the Icelandic economic crash were characterised by a strong national-centred rhetoric of ‘us-the-nation’ versus ‘others’ that diverted attention from massive minority interests, which had access to hidden funds. The Panama Papers showed that many of the same people celebrated in Iceland as the embodied representation of the country were simultaneously moving money into tax havens. Exposés have also revealed the way that dark money secretly funded campaigns using anti-migrant racism to facili...

This article brings together trends in Critical Discourse Analysis dating from the 1980s – which examine how language use and ideologies (re)produce social inequality – with current research in the social sciences on neoliberalism and other emerging politico-economic formations. The article addresses such a problematic with an empirical case: the language strategies, dubbed langue de bois, that people affiliated with Luxembourg’s offshore financial center employ to justify their practices. The contribution herein surveys the political rationality of the country’s financial center by analyzing the langue de bois that its representatives and boosters use. These language strategies, furthermore, enable Luxembourg’s finance elites to socialize the domestic public’s understanding of their activities.

An increasingly opaque global economy demands new forms of collaboration for journalists and civil society actors protecting democracy and the rule of law. Countries and jurisdictions have developed a deeply intertwined network of financial services and a social, political and physical infrastructure enabling regulatory evasion, tax avoidance, and eradicating accountability in business operations. Whis-tleblowers have in recent years made a solid impact on new discussions of the role of the tax haven complex in the global economy. Collaboration with whistleblowers is a strategy that journalists and civil society have utilized to overcome the challenges of investigating big players in the economy. This collaboration calls upon parliaments to update their legislation affecting collaborative investigative journalism. This article examines discussions on whistleblower protection in both the EU and Norway in light of the Lux Leaks whistleblower-journalist collaboration, and the internal whis-tleblower in the Telenor/VimpelCom corruption case. Attention is also drawn to the increase in international collaboration among investigative journalists.

Verena Dürr's short story Memorabilia was first presented at the Bachmann Prize in 2017. It follows the restorer of a famous film prop through the evergreen forests, sterile corridors and obscure economies of an alpine free port in Switzerland. When asked whether the title was a 'thematic postmodern metaphor for a loss of identity and the projection of longed-for memories in the fragmentary life of the present,' Dürr replied: 'I always write "parallel to reality".'

O Presente trabalho teve como objetivo falar sobre o Direito Tributário Internacional, conceito e características para que fosse possível fazer a conexão com a evasão fiscal e a existência dos paraísos fiscais. O princípio da soberania fiscal teve destaque para que pudesse ser questionada a dupla tributação internacional. Com a globalização, houve uma intensificação das relações comerciais internacionais em decorrência da fluidez do capital, dos bens, das pessoas e dos serviços, o que facilitou a criação dos paraísos fiscais. A busca das empresas pelos paraísos fiscais justifica-se na redução dos custos fiscais, aumentando sua margem de lucro, o que nos levou à abordagem sobre evasão e elisão fiscal. Ao final, indagou-se sobre a economia paralela gerada pelos paraísos fiscais e sobre como as lojas virtuais podem ser uma grande fonte de evasão fiscal.

At least four aspects of College Board’s current circumstances seem problematic:

·      College Board enjoys monopolies in key markets and leverages those monopolies to support its competition in non-monopoly markets against competitors who enjoy no monopoly safe havens.
·      It retains a huge next egg of investments that the current leadership of College Board did nothing to attain, much of it harbored in offshore tax havens, that it uses to support its competition in non-monopoly markets against competitors who enjoy no similar advantage.
·      Its governance structure appears impregnable. The current leadership, and the current CEO, can do what they please with legacy monopolies and assets, with little possibility that the organization will hold them to account for their behavior.
·      College Board leadership pays itself large salaries that seem exorbitant considering both the organization’s charity status and the profound mismanagement of the past several years.

The public policy solution to these problems would seem obvious in the abstract. Either regulate the monopoly parts, as is done with public utilities, or break up the College Board, as was done most famously with Standard Oil a century ago, and continues to be done currently during corporate takeovers.

Another option might be to investigate and eliminate any barriers to entry by potential competitors. The participation of so many educational institutions as both members of the College Board and users of its services could perhaps be considered collusion — a restraint on competition for the AP and other programs — and therefore subject to antitrust remediation.

Regardless of the economic and legal realities, however, College Board presents itself as a charitable nonprofit whose sole mission is to serve the public good. Yet College Board behaves much like a private, aggressive, profit-maximizing firm. Its leaders seem to desire the benefits of both worlds, but not the full risk and responsibility of either.

In this globalized economy, where businesses have become an international strategic game, multinational
companies have taken advantage of eliminating trade barriers and opened branches all over the world. Many of
them, usually registered in tax havens, do not carry any economic activity, being used only in complex tax
optimization schemes. The issue of money transferred from Romania through offshore is on the agenda of many
papers, but an analysis at micro level on this matter has not being performed. The purpose of this paper is to
identify which is the level of transactions concluded by the companies listed on Bucharest Stock Exchange with
their affiliates in tax havens. The target population that we intend to analyse is composed by companies listed
on the BSE, without the financial institutions because they have a different financial reporting basis. Variables
proposed to analyse are: acquisitions and sales, loans, interests, receivables, payables, insurance. In the paper
we aim to conduct an objective analysis of transactions, detaching us from interpreting i n a positive or negative
way their legality. The conclusions emphasize that the level of transfer pricing identified for the analysed
companies can be considered relatively reduced compared with the situation in other countries.
Keywords: transfer pricing, tax havens, tax planning

This blog post, discusses existing research on the still rather opaque topic of offshore finance. Subsequently, it is outlined how the CORPNET team is going to shed some new light on this crucial topic by analyzing transnational ownership ties of multinational corporations utilizing complex networks methods and the 'big data' provided by the Orbis database. Offshore finance is no longer the small and peripheral phenomenon it once was. During the last four decades, offshore finance has become a crucial element of the contemporary international political economy. Today, offshore financial centers (which can also be called tax havens or regulatory havens) constitute central nodes within global financial markets. Gabriel Zucman has recently estimated that financial wealth to the tune of almost US$8 trillion is held offshore – a sum that amounts to almost 50% of the GDP of the EU or the US. This causes a global tax revenue loss of approximately US$200 billion. Estimates for offshore wealth by the Tax Justice Network even range between US$21 and US$32 trillion. Arguably, high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and big multinational corporations (MNCs) hold the vast majority of this offshore wealth, which leads directly to questions of increasing economic inequality. The impact of offshore finance not only pertains to economic inequality but also to questions of corporate accountability and transparency – both of which are pivotal to the proper functioning of any market economy. For this reason, the Tax Justice Network does not use the term offshore financial centers or tax havens, but instead calls them secrecy jurisdictions, because secrecy and opacity are major reasons why foreign economic actors use these countries and territories. With this secrecy and lack of accountability come big risks. The corporate scandals of Enron, Olympus and Parmalat as well as the near-collapse of the large hedge fund LTCM all involved subsidiaries in tax havens. In addition, these secrecy jurisdictions have functioned as legal domiciles for the creation of complex structured financial products, such as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and other asset-backed securities (ABSs). According to Photis Lysandrou and Anastasia Nesvetailova, these opaque financial products have contributed to the development of the global financial crisis, or at least have aggravated it significantly.

Short explanation of how media corporations are using some leaks to fight political class instead of Tax Havens main users: multinationals.

Speech in the European Parliament durng the events related with the Tax Justice Together Europe Tour 2016.
Juan Valerdi (5 minutes)
(Translated By Juan Valerdi august 2016)

This article examines why Vanuatu creates a congenial legal environment for an offshore financial centre (OFC). There are four structural reasons. The OFC turns Vanuatu into a legal transplant laboratory. It makes significant contributions to its small local economy. The OFC's subculture plays an important role in the country's domestic politics. Vanuatu contains few interest groups which are inclined to oppose tax haven development.

Corruption seems to be everywhere, despite multiple laws, rules, guidelines, and institutions aimed at increasing government transparency and punishing undue influence. This is because corruption is seen as an individual crime rather than a systemic tendency. We need to move away from the ‘bad apples’ approach, in which corruption exists only because there are corrupt people in office, and look at the structure in which these corrupt elites are embedded. What I call systemic corruption refers to the inner functioning of the state order, independent of who occupies the places of power in it. Since democracy is a political regime in which an electoral majority is supposed to rule, it makes sense to think that ‘good’ democratic government would benefit (or at least not hurt) the interests of the majority. When the social wealth that is collectively created is consistently and increasingly accumulated by a small minority against the material interests of the majority, then it means that the rules of the game and how they are being used and abused are benefiting the powerful few instead of the many. This trend of oligarchization of power within a general respect for the rule of law provides convincing evidence for the systemic corruption of representative democracy—even if we are still unable to measure it properly.

Özet
Vergi devletin en önemli gelir kaynağıdır. Kamu hizmetlerinin aksamadan yürütülerek, kalitesinin artırılabilmesi en temelde iyi işleyen bir vergi sistemine bağlıdır. Bu bakımdan devletin vergi hasıla-tını azami düzeye çıkarabilmesi, beraberinde vatandaşların kamu hizmetlerinden elde ettiği fayda düzeyini de yükseltecektir. Ancak vergi hasılatının artırılmak istenmesi çeşitli ekonomik kesimlerde zaman zaman olumsuz tepkilere de yol açabilmektedir. Örneğin mükellefler vergiye uyum konusunda isteksiz davranarak, vergiden kaçınma veya vergi kaçırma fiillerinde bulunabilirler. Bu noktada vergi cennetleri, devletlerin önemli ölçüde gelir kaybına uğramasına yol açabilmektedirler. Zira özellikle kıyı ötesi finansal işlemlerin yoğunlaştığı küreselleşme sürecinde, vergi cennetleri, vergi yükümlülü-ğünden kurtulmanın önemli bir aracı haline gelmiştir. Bu çalışmada, vergi cennetleri sorunu 2016 yılında yaşanan " Panama belgeleri skandalı " temelinde ele alınacaktır. Çalışmanın amacı, vergi cen-netlerinin ekonomik ve sosyal etkilerinin, yaşanan bu güncel deneyim ışığında incelenmesidir. Abstract Tax is the most important revenue search of the state. Executing of public services without disruption and increasing its quality fundamentally depends on a well functioning tax system. In this respect maximizing the state's tax revenue will also increase utility level of citizens from public goods. But when the state desires to increase tax reveneue sometimes it can also lead to negative reactions in several economic segments. For example, taxpayers can be reluctant for tax compliance and they act tax avoidance or tax evasion behaviour. In this context, tax havens can lead to loss the state's income significantly. Because, especially in the globalization process which offshore financial transactions is intensified, tax havens have become an important tool of getting rid of tax liability. In this paper tax havens issue will be dealed on the basis of the " 2016 Panama papers scandal ". Aim of the study is to examine the economic and social effects of tax havens in this current experience.

Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Delaware, Jersey, The City, the Cayman Islands: have you ever wondered what the landscapes of a tax haven might look like? When a state accommodates more holding companies than inhabitants, when just one of its buildings houses the mailboxes of 300,000 companies, including Google, Apple, Coca-Cola and some 378 firms belonging to Donald Trump, what is the resulting atmosphere? What is the reality behind the addresses mentioned in the Panama Papers? It is with this kind of question in mind that the Paris-based collective RYBN embarked on a series of documentary trips to certain countries which have made tax evasion the basis of their economy…

What has come to light in both the Panama and Paradise Papers leak proves that in tax havens, cocaine money, money from tax evasion, and legal money all live together, legitimizing one another.

Legal capitalism has learned from criminal capitalism that in the world of money, only rule-breakers survive. Drug traffickers were the pioneers of a free market model that has been slowly adopted by the legal economy.

Cocaine combined all of the pillars of contemporary capitalism: speed, globalization and economic power. Nowhere is this synthesis better in display than in offshore tax havens

" Our tax system should be…fair, efficient, redistributive, enhancing welfare… " , but also " pro-growth, flat, competitive, favoring business… ". These are only a few examples of statements politicians have made about the principles of tax policy. Of course, a tax system can be all those things, but not all at once. Hence, those statements reveal something about the dominant norms guiding tax policy. Is justice the purpose of tax policy? Or competitiveness? The incapacity of major powers to effectively ban tax evasion and tax avoidance (at least until recently) appears puzzling, as the labeled adversaries are mostly very small states without any economic weight. Focusing on norms can help to understand the issue: In 2004, Michael Webb pointed to transnational corporations as dominant voices in the discourse about tax policy and to prevailing norms among US policymakers that rather favored a " race to the bottom " in taxation than effective international regulation. In the last years, something has changed: Civil society groups have called for tax justice and major events such as the financial crisis and the Panama papers have influenced public opinion. And indeed, some of the recent evolutions in international tax policy such as Automatic Information Exchange and the BEPS project look promising. However, the sustainability of these measures depends on a sustained will of major states to enforce them, which in turn is favored by a shift of the dominant norms guiding tax policy. This paper attempts to find out whether such a norm-shift is about to occur. Using both qualitative and quantitative text-mining methods, general statements on tax policy by American politicians are identified in several thousand press articles and government sources covering the time span from 1997 to 2017 and their normative content is compared over time. The analysis reveals that neoliberal norms are still dominant in the American tax policy discourse , where as they cannot claim exclusivity. Most significant is the rise of economic nationalism over the last twenty years. Keywords: tax policy norms – race to the bottom – content analysis

Odebrecht and Lava Jato are far from being just corruption justice cases, they are part of an International War on Corruption that has no clear beneficiaries ... 
The interview was a result of the juan valerdi participation in the economist table of the II Latin-American Investigation Journalists Meeting in Lima peru (may 2017)
http://www.convoca.pe/agenda-propia/periodistas-de-10-paises-se-reunen-en-lima-para-analizar-el-caso-lava-jato-y-el-mundo

This a draft of the theoretical construct of a research prospectus. I am placing it here to get comments, views and constructive criticism. The research aims to look at the illicit financial flows from Sub-Saharan (SSA) to the developed world via Tax havens through the power and influence construct. Are the emerging states destined to fail just by virtue of the structural power ingrained into the systemic international architecture ?