A new report, outlined in a paper released by the Tax Justice Network, claims that, conservatively estimated, between US$21 trillion and US$32 trillion is held unrecorded and in offshore tax havens around the world. The paper – Inequality: You don’t know the half of it – says it is a first attempt to lay out the nature of how unrecorded offshore assets and income feed through to an understanding of inequality. The paper claims the banking secrecy system is “alive and well” and “growing fast”. The paper also points to studies that show that 8% of global wealth is held in tax havens, and 6% is unrecorded. It examines, among other things, the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance, and the use of trusts.
[LTN 141, 24/7]