According to the Financial Secrecy Index, America ranked #5 in 2011 in banking secrecy, trailing only after Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Hong Kong. It was only a financial secrecy leader in terms of its global scale weight of 0.208.
| RANK | Secrecy Jurisdiction | FSI – Value | Secrecy Score | Global Scale Weight |
| 1 | Switzerland | 1879.2 | 78 | 0.061 |
| 2 | Cayman Islands | 1646.7 | 77 | 0.046 |
| 3 | Luxembourg | 1621.2 | 68 | 0.131 |
| 4 | Hong Kong | 1370.7 | 73 | 0.042 |
| 5 | USA | 1160.1 | 58 | 0.208 |
To solve this problem and become the world’s largest and most secret tax haven, America created FATCA to destroy its competition, forcing other countries to provide America with financial data while rejecting reciprocity. With America pushing Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Hong Kong to drop down the ranks in financial secrecy, will America finally succeed in achieving its goal of becoming the world’s largest and most secret tax haven at the expense of innocent Americans abroad whom it harmed in the process?
Not only is America becoming the largest, most secret tax haven in the world, but it is also the only nation in the world, along with the dictatorship of Eritrea, which robs money from the coffers of other nations through citizenship-based taxation. Were the G-20 to expel all major providers of financial secrecy, it would not only become more legitimate, but also significantly smaller (a G-15?), without the American tax haven.
As the world’s most secret and largest tax haven, America will lead in creating a criminogenic environment for a litany of evils that hurt the citizens of rich and poor countries alike through fraud, evasion and avoidance of financial regulations, insider dealing, embezzlement, wholesale bribery, non-payment of alimony, money laundering, tax evasion and much more besides.
Interesting. I do wonder about their methodologies, as some countries that rank well on the transparency index have high rates of corruption. The list is limited to 71 countries, while the UN has 193 member states.
If the US were sincere about stopping tax evasion, they would begin by demanding that foreign investment coming into US investment accounts be demonstrably clean, i.e. coming from a non-tax haven state and include the tax identification number (or equivalent) of the country of residence, which would receive annual reports on those accounts.
Such a practice, were it to spread to the other OECD countries, would leave “dirty money” nowhere to go, except higher risk jurisdictions.
My humble opinion.
Not quite sure I agree.
If anything, FATCA will push money held by US persons with clear US Indicia into the US, but those whose US status is not revealed by US Indicia and non-US investors will begin to avoid parking cash in US assets.
It’s a big world out here and the money is with creditor nations, not debtor. FATCA is a passive form of capital control which will force the US down the haven list and erode the US tax base.
Swedish television just had a 30 second report about a record amount of tax Money that is coming in during the last 2 months due to some new Exchange agreements with Luxembourgh & Switz. This must be a blah blah Campaign related to the FARTBART trip and its upcoming grand signing ceremony.