Tax haven

A tax haven is defined as a country or place with very low 'effective' rates of taxation for foreign investors ('headline' rates may be higher). In some traditional definitions, a tax haven also offers financial secrecy. However, while countries with high levels of secrecy but also high rates of taxation (e.g. the United States and Germany in the Financial Secrecy Index ('FSI') rankings), can feature in some tax haven lists, they are not universally considered as tax havens. In contrast, countries with lower levels of secrecy but also low 'effective' rates of taxation (e.g. Ireland in the FSI rankings), appear in most § Tax haven lists. The consensus around effective tax rates has led academics to note that the term 'tax haven' and 'offshore financial centre' are almost synonymous. Traditional tax havens, like Jersey, are open about zero rates of taxation, but as a consequence have limited bilateral tax treaties. Modern corporate tax havens have non-zero 'headline' rates of taxation and high levels of OECD–compliance, and thus have large networks of bilateral tax treaties. However, their base erosion and profit shifting ('BEPS') tools enable corporates to achieve 'effective' tax rates closer to zero, not just in the haven but in all countries with which the haven has tax treaties; putting them on tax haven lists. According to modern studies, the § Top 10 tax havens include corporate-focused havens like the Netherlands, Singapore, Ireland and the U.K., while Luxembourg, Hong Kong, the Caribbean (the Caymans, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands) and Switzerland feature as both major traditional tax havens and major corporate tax havens. Corporate tax havens often serve as 'conduits' to traditional tax havens. Use of tax havens results in a loss of tax revenues to countries which are not tax havens. Estimates of the § Financial scale of taxes avoided vary, but the most credible have a range of US$100–250 billion per annum. In addition, capital held in tax havens can permanently leave the tax base (base erosion). Estimates of capital held in tax havens also vary: the most credible estimates are between US$7–10 trillion (up to 10% of global assets). The harm of traditional and corporate tax havens has been particularly noted in developing nations, where the tax revenues are needed to build infrastructure. Over 15% of countries are sometimes labelled tax havens. Tax havens are mostly successful and well-governed economies, and being a haven has brought prosperity. The top 10–15 GDP-per-capita countries, excluding oil and gas exporters, are tax havens. Because of § Inflated GDP-per-capita (due to accounting BEPS flows), havens are prone to over-leverage (international capital misprice the artificial debt-to-GDP). This can lead to severe credit cycles and/or property/banking crises when international capital flows are repriced. Ireland's Celtic Tiger, and the subsequent financial crisis in 2009–13, is an example. Jersey is another. Research shows § U.S. as the largest beneficiary, and use of tax havens by U.S corporates maximised long-term U.S. exchequer receipts. The focus on combating tax havens (e.g. OECD–IMF projects) has been on common standards, transparency and data sharing. The rise of OECD-compliant corporate tax havens, whose BEPS tools are responsible for most of the lost taxes, has led to criticism of this approach, versus actual taxes paid. Higher-tax jurisdictions, such as the United States and many member states of the European Union, departed from the OECD BEPS Project in 2017–18, to introduce anti-BEPS tax regimes, targeted raising net taxes paid by corporations in corporate tax havens (e.g. the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 ('TCJA') GILTI–BEAT–FDII tax regimes and move to a hybrid 'territorial' tax system, and proposed EU Digital Services Tax regime, and EU Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base). There is no established consensus regarding a specific definition for what constitutes a tax haven. This is the conclusion from non-governmental organisations, such as the Tax Justice Network in 2018, from the 2008 investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, from the 2015 investigation by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, from the 2017 investigation by the European Parliament, and from leading academic researchers of tax havens. The issue, however, is material, as being labelled a 'tax haven' has consequences for a country seeking to develop and trade under bilateral tax treaties. When Ireland was 'blacklisted' by G20 member Brazil in 2016, bilateral trade declined. It is even more onerous for corporate tax havens, whose foreign multinationals rely on the haven's extensive network of bilateral tax treaties, through which the foreign multinationals execute BEPS transactions, re-routing global untaxed income to the haven. One of the first § Important papers on tax havens, was the 1994 Hines–Rice paper by James R. Hines Jr. It is the most cited paper on tax haven research, even in late 2017, and Hines is the most cited author on tax haven research. As well as offering insights into tax havens, it took the view that the diversity of countries that become tax havens was so great that detailed definitions were inappropriate. Hines merely noted that tax havens were: a group of countries with unusually low tax rates. Hines reaffirmed this approach in a 2009 paper with Dhammika Dharmapala.