News

Tax haven laws positive but not a silver bullet

Transparency Nassim Khadem
464 words
21 February 2014
The Australian Financial Review
AFNR
First
12
English
Copyright 2014. Fairfax Media Management Pty Limited.
Governments will never be able to stop tax dodgers from moving to low-tax countries, says the OECD's tax
chief, but will be able to recoup billions of dollars thanks to the organisation's global road map for the
exchange of information.

One of the OECD's objectives for the Group of 20 finance ministers in Sydney is to reduce bank secrecy and
other confidentiality laws that have led to tax havens emerging in places, such as Bermuda, Cayman Islands,
Cook Islands and Liechtenstein. Accounts with any type of financial institution will immediately be reported to
the account holder's home country.

The OECD's man leading the fight against tax havens, Pascal-Saint Amans, said he was confident Australia
would sign up. While 42 countries are on board, Australia is not.

No global authority has been able to put an exact figure on the amount of money held in tax havens. A 2012
report by advocacy group Tax Justice Network gave a higher estimate of between $US21 trillion ($23
trillion) and $US32 trillion. It put global tax revenue lost to tax havens at between $US190 billion and $US255
billion a year.

"It's big money," Mr Saint-Amans said. He said issues around the confidentiality provided by banks is
"something which is taken very seriously and which will be addressed".

He also dismissed concerns the OECD plan would be costly to implement, saying it had built on global
anti-money laundering standards and been designed to be compatible with the system behind the US Foreign
Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which governments were already planning to spend money on.

"We have designed it to be compatible with regional systems," he said. "We've prevented governments from
doing their own thing, which would not be compatible with common reporting standard and IT architecture, so
there's one cost. All those likely to develop a FATCA have agreed, which means there will be no other costs."

He said the OECD would never be able to stop governments giving residency to those engaging in tax
avoidance, and nor would it want to.

Singapore has made a huge effort to attract the world's wealthiest business people to its shores, with
generous tax incentives, a very low personal income tax and no capital gains tax. Singapore also makes it
relatively simple to get residency. "Unless you close all borders and say people can't move because they may
move for tax reasons, I can't address that; nobody can," he said. "You will always have people willing to leave
for tax and non tax reasons." But will all the billionaires of the world end up in Singapore and Monaco? I'm not
sure."

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