Investments made through tax shelters can be especially lucrative, owing to the significant tax savings offshore companies may enjoy.īob Geldof, Madonna and U.S. Rich but otherwise “average” folk, including dentists and at least one Alabama greengrocer, use shell companies for reasons that may include making it harder for potential creditors – including former spouses, displeased business partners or tax inspectors – to identify and recoup monies allegedly owed. They also play a vital role in facilitating the flow of illicit money around the globe. Shell companies can hold money, luxury homes, intellectual property, businesses and other assets. A shell company exists, legally, only on paper. Image: Marwen Ben Mustapha - Inkyfada / ICIJ Why are they called ‘shell’ companies?īecause, like an empty shell, there is nothing inside. Shell companies only exist, legally, on paper. Some use the term “shell company” and “offshore company” interchangeably. Rules differ, but the actual owners of many shells are not disclosed in incorporation documents. A single office building in the Cayman Islands, for example, is home to 19,000 shell companies. Shell companies typically exist only on paper, with no full-time employees, and no office. What is a ‘shell’ company?Ī shell company is a legal entity created in a tax haven. Mauritius, for example, has said 5,000 people would lose jobs if the country stopped being a tax haven. Tax havens also create work for lawyers, accountants and secretaries. Tax havens make significant income from fees paid by people and companies who create and use shell companies. Image: Marwen Ben Mustapha / Inkyfada / ICIJ Why would a country, or state, decide to become a tax haven? Mauritius, which was central to Mauritius Leaks, is one example of a tax haven that attracts companies from thousands of miles away. Some tax havens, like Niue and Vanuatu, have cleaned up their act under international pressure while others, like Dubai, are emerging as new hotspots of illicit wealth. Mauritius Leaks examined how companies used Mauritius to avoid taxes, while Paradise Papers revealed the secrets of Bermuda, the island where the law firm Appleby was founded. Panama Papers, for example, exposed how Mossack Fonseca, one of the biggest offshore law firms in the world, sold thousands of shell companies in the British Virgin Islands to clients around the globe. ICIJ investigations have focused on different tax havens, often depending on the origin and content of documents. state of Delaware, or are territories, like the Cayman Islands. Others are within countries, like the U.S. Some are independent countries, like Panama, the Netherlands and Malta. Where are these tax havens?Īll over the world. Tax havens nearly always deny being tax havens. Because information can be hard to extract, tax havens are sometimes also called secrecy jurisdictions. Tax havens also typically limit public disclosure about companies and their owners. There is no universal definition, but tax havens, or offshore financial centers, are generally countries or places with low or no corporate taxes that allow outsiders to easily set up businesses there. If you have questions we haven’t answered, email us here. Here is a guide we’ve assembled to help explain how offshore finance works, and why it matters. The easy movement of illicit money destabilizes governments and helps despots stay in power. Years after Panama Papers, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists remains committed to exposing those who exploit tax havens - a long list that also includes corrupt politicians, mobsters, drug traffickers and other criminals who launder cash and assets through offshore companies to throw law enforcement off the scent. As with other inequities, the poor get it the worst. Multinational companies use the extra cash to reward shareholders and edge out smaller competitors.Ĭountries that need tax revenue the most lose more tax money, as a percentage of GDP, than wealthy countries. The wealthy keep the money to build intergenerational fortunes, creating a new global aristocratic class and exacerbating the divide between the global haves and have-nots. The cost to governments, in lost revenue, is estimated to exceed $800 billion a year. The rest of us cover the difference - or, more commonly, can’t, leaving treasuries bereft of monies needed to build roads, schools and tackle existential threats like climate change and global pandemics.īy some estimates, about 10 percent of the total output of all the economies in the world is parked in offshore financial centers, held by shell companies that exist only on paper. With the help of lawyers, accountants, white-shoe professionals and complicit Western governments, the wealthy and well-connected have avoided paying trillions of dollars in taxes. But not all taxpayers play by the same set of rules.
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