Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 3 of 11 (Year 2016)

2,818 thoughts on “Media and Blog Articles Open for Comments – Part 3 of 11 (Year 2016)”

1. How the U.S. became one of the world’s biggest tax havens – The Washington Post
   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/05/how-the-u-s-became-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-tax-havens/

   So far, the documents from Mossack Fonseca have not implicated American politicians or other wealthy people, according to Fusion, which reviewed the leaked material. Those names may yet emerge, though, in an interview with Fusion, [James] Henry of the Tax Justice Network suggests that there is a reason for their absence.

   The U.S. has an onshore haven industry that is as secretive as anywhere, Henry said. “[Americans] discovered that they really don’t need to go to Panama.”

   While these Panama Papers are not insignificant, what I’d really like to see are the USA Papers, including the Florida Papers, the Texas Papers, the Nevada Papers, the Montana Papers, the Wyoming Papers, the South Dakota Papers and, especially, the Delaware Papers.

2. @Bubblebustin,

   “How the OECD plans to “mini-FATCA” the US for not cooperating under its FATCA agreements:

   http://www.the-best-of-both-worlds.com/us-banks.html”

   The EU Parliament is to propose that the EU impose a 35% withholding on gross proceeds on any US bank doing a transaction within the EU unless that bank agrees to automatically exchange information as per the FATCA IGA promises.

   Oh that’s so delicious. I hope they do that. I love how they one-up the US, too: You’ll withhold 30% from our banks? Fine, we’ll withhold 35% from yours.

3. Just left this comment at the Washington Post article:

   Time now for some REAL American heroes to release the USA PAPERS to wipe the sanctimonious frowns of disapproval from the faces of America’s utterly hypocritical government leaders. How can anyone in either Congress or the White House declare a pox on tax havens around the globe when all they really care about is eliminating the competition to become the biggest tax haven of all? US Persons worldwide saw through their FATCA lies over five years ago and only now are others beginning to wake-up to the REAL Crime of the Century. The Panama Papers is close, but not quite worthy of a cigar. That will only happen if some truly intrepid investigative reporters dare to enter the lion’s den itself, the one with the letters U.S.A. emblazoned above it.

4. Shots Fired: Wikileaks Accuses Panama Papers’ Leaker Of Being “Soros-Funded, Soft-Power Tax Dodge”
   http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-05/shots-fired-wikileaks-accuses-panama-papers-leaker-being-soros-funded-soft-power-tax

   And so, a new contest is born: one between the “old” source of mega leaks, and the new one. We wonder if and when Edward Snowden and/or Glenn Greenwald will also chime in.

   But we are far more interested if, now that there appears to be a war brewing between Wikileaks and ICIJ, what “information” will be released next, and whether whatever comes out will put the entire Panama Papers project in a different perspective, one which, as even Bloomberg has hinted, may have been to benefit the last remaining global tax haven around, the United States itself, as well as the most notorious provider of “tax haven” services in said country: Rothschild.

5. @foo

   All the US has to do is prove it can’t safeguard the data it’s collecting for other countries – not a difficult task.

   @Deckard1138

   These leaks might actually be politically motivated? 😉 😉 😉

6. @Bubblebustin

   “These leaks might actually be politically motivated?”

   I don’t think one needs a tinfoil hat to figure that out 😉

7. @Deckard1138

   The truth of the matter is most of the attorney’s who work in places like Carson City Nevada are hard right wing Republicans. I don’t expect them to tell ever!!

   BTW, though why was the Prime Minister of Italy glad handling with the Governor of Nevada last week with all of Italy’s deep rooted problems with tax evasion.

   http://www.abqjournal.com/748108/biz/biz-most-recent/italian-leader-helps-dedicate-unique-nevada-geothermal-plant.html

   Also note that Nevada Senator Dean Heller sitting next to the Prime Minister of Italy is totally opposed to any FATCA reciprocity by Nevada banks to the Government of Italy.

8. @Tim

   One week from now, I suspect that people will be asking slightly different questions about Matteo Renzi’s motives:

   http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/italy-pm-matteo-renzi-to-visit-iran-next-week-1338615

9. The annual Greenback expat survey. Some RBT and FATCA questions. Takes three minutes. Hey, why not?

   http://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/us-expat-opinion-survey/

10. Done, why not! Thanks, Barbara.

11. “Panama Has Company as Bank-Secrecy Holdout, as U.S. Offers Haven”
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/panama-has-company-as-bank-secrecy-holdout-as-u-s-offers-haven

    The latest reporting “underscores the secrecy in Panama,” said Stefanie Ostfeld, the acting head of the U.S. office of the anti-corruption group Global Witness. “What’s lesser known, is the U.S. is just as big a secrecy jurisdiction as so many of these Caribbean countries and Panama. We should not want to be the playground for the world’s dirty money, which is what we are right now.”

    Advisers around the world are increasingly using the U.S. resistance to the OECD’s standards as a marketing tool — attracting overseas money to U.S. state-level tax and secrecy havens like Nevada and South Dakota, potentially keeping it hidden from their home governments.
    [..]
    “The U.S. doesn’t follow a lot of the international standards, and because of its political power, it’s able to continue,” said Bruce Zagaris an attorney at Berliner Corcoran & Rowe LLP who specializes in international tax and money laundering regulations. “It’s basically the only country that can continue to do that. Others like Panama have tried, but Panama can’t punch as high as the U.S.”

    Indeed, in a statement issued Monday by OECD secretary general Angel Gurria, the OECD said “Panama is the last major holdout that continues to allow funds to be hidden offshore from tax and law-enforcement authorities.”

    The statement didn’t mention the U.S., which is the OECD’s largest funder.

    Pascal Saint-Amans, the OECD’s tax policy director, said the two countries weren’t comparable, as the U.S. regularly provides information to regulators and law enforcers in other countries, even if it hasn’t signed onto the OECD standard.

    “The politics are favorable to the U.S. and unfavorable to Panama,” Zagaris said.

12. @Embee – “Following a link on Bubblebustin’s “Best of Both Worlds” link we get this …
    http://www.taxjustice.net/2016/01/22/europe-must-impose-withholding-taxes-on-payments-to-target-u-s-and-other-tax-havens/”

    It is the same guy, Mark Morris – he runs the BoBW website and wrote the Tax Justice Network proposal.

13. http://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/cases/decision.faces/en/65927/html.bookmark

    Sophie’s world!

14. @Deckard1138, re; “…. what I’d really like to see are the USA Papers, including the Florida Papers, the Texas Papers, the Nevada Papers, the Montana Papers, the Wyoming Papers, the South Dakota Papers and, especially, the Delaware Papers.”

    Exactly.

    And I note that no-one ever makes mention in articles with those types of lists of US homegrown domestic tax havens that the Vice President of the US “… Biden represented Delaware as a United States Senator from 1973 until becoming Vice President in 2009.” He was their Senator for 36 years. And so benefited from that state’s tax haven and secrecy regime – a (or the) major economic engine of his state. Obviously he didn’t oppose it, or he wouldn’t have lasted that long as Delaware’s Senator. He must be very familiar with ‘How Delaware Thrives as a Corporate Tax Haven’
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thrives-as-a-corporate-tax-haven.html?_r=0
    and ‘How the U.S. became one of the world’s biggest tax havens’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/05/how-the-u-s-became-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-tax-havens/

    But he FATCA’d Canada and the rest of the globe.

15. @iota

    Mark Morris is recognizable by the size of his cajones. We’d be wise to watch his movements. More about him on his website “Planning for CRS”:

    “Regular interaction and input with the OECD Global Transparency Forum board members on the CRS. Currently advising the EU Parliament on the introduction of a mini FATCA against USA for breach of promised FATCA IGA reciprocal reporting. Has been recognised by the EU Commission for his valuable exchange of views on the EU Savings Tax Directive Amendments since 2005.”

    http://www.the-best-of-both-worlds.com/about-me.html

16. @Bubblebustin – He is advising (on his reverse-FATCA proposal) but is the EU listening? Could they do anything about it, and would they want to, even if they could? And would a reverse-FATCA do anything to help those harmed by FATCA? I may be missing something but I don’t think so. The point of a reverse-FATCA would be to expose US tax-havens. EU member states are on far too shaky ground to go there, is my guess.

    The data protection issue seems to me to have much more traction. There’s an interesting questionnaire that was sent out by the EU Artice 29 Working Party to EU member states some time ago. See http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/article-29/documentation/opinion-recommendation/files/2015/wp234_en.pdf, esp. Qn. 5.29.

17. Typo – should say “Qn 5.9” “Rights of data subjects”

18. @Bubblebustin We’d be wise to watch his movements.

    Yes, and watch them very closely. Have a read over some of his other proposals, like the one where your country of last residence should be allowed to stalk you for ten years after you leave:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20160319042533/http://www.the-best-of-both-worlds.com/support-files/previous-residencies.pdf

    The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. My enemy is my enemy because he’s nasty and vicious and grasping, and most of his enemies have survived until today only by being nasty and vicious and grasping themselves, or by driving those they control or influence to become nasty and vicious and grasping. I don’t know whether Mark Morris falls under that description, but the overall thrust of his ideas sure makes me uncomfortable.

19. @iota @Eric

    Maybe those predictions of an impending tax war are true – when so many are fighting over the same resources. That means a lot of capital flowing to where it’s perceived as being the safest. The banks must be sh!tting themselves.

20. “The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.”

    Wise words often forgotten by the oppressed, underrepresented and scapegoated.

21. @Eric
    Definitely. I’m getting a 1930s kind of a feeling. All the countries are too much at each other’s throats.

22. @Publius et al.

    As they say, history may not repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_preceding_World_War_II

23. @Bubblebustin – “Maybe those predictions of an impending tax war are true – when so many are fighting over the same resources.”

    Personally I don’t think so. I think it’s still the West against the Rest, as ever was – it’s just that for a long time it suited the OECD countries to turn a blind eye to the existence of tax havens, but it no longer does, due to globalization and the unpredictability of China. So the havens are going to be dismantled and brought in from the cold, amid much hypocritical tut-tutting.

24. Global TV labels US as one of the top tax havens. Fails to reciprocate with FATCA too. Love it. “Dirty, rotten, lying, hypocrites!”

    http://globalnews.ca/news/2622724/a-top-haven-for-tax-cheats-that-may-surprise-you-the-united-states/

25. @BC Doc

    That Global article,

    …”Pascal Saint-Amans, head of the OECD’s Center for Tax Policy and Administration, says the U.S. often makes information available to other countries upon request. But that means countries can get details only on those they already suspect of tax evasion.”…

    …”The U.S. Treasury Department says it plans to propose regulations requiring foreign-owned “limited liability companies” to get tax identification numbers disclosing the identities of their owners. Once the rules are in place, Treasury says in a statement, the Internal Revenue Service will be better equipped to respond to requests for help from foreign governments.”…

    This is not reciprocity, when other tax jurisdictions need to request the information on suspected tax evaders. The US has a big sign on it saying “No fishing expeditions”, and want to keep it that way.

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