Pacific News Service – April 12, 2005
A new global movement is tracking the increasing number of offshore tax shelters and pressuring governments to make multinationals pay up.
As Americans fret over their personal income taxes, there is a movement afoot to reduce the tax burden on ordinary people by getting corporations and wealthy individuals to pay their fair share.
Last month, the Tax Justice Network (www.taxjustice.net/) issued a report based on publicly available statistics from the Bank of International Settlements and Merrill Lynch, the investment company. The data showed the following:
–Approximately $11.5 trillion of assets are held offshore by high net-worth individuals, or about a third of the total global GDP, the value of goods and services, which in 2003 was $36.2 trillion.
–The annual income that these assets might be expected to earn amounts to $860 billion annually.
–The tax not paid as a result of these funds being held offshore would exceed $255 billion a year.
CorpWatch, April 4, 2005
In December of 2004, there was a horrific fire in a Buenos Aires disco called the Cromagnon Republic. Three rock fans shot off flares that set fire to the ceiling and engulfed the overcrowded discotheque in flames and smoke. In the rush to get out, 200 people were killed and 700 injured, most from trampling and smoke inhalation. The main entrance had been wired shut, and some of the emergency exits were locked, blocking escape.
In the days that followed, thousands of the victims’ parents and friends marched in the streets and demanded justice. A judge started proceedings for manslaughter and froze $20 million belonging to the “owner,” Omar Chaban. However, investigators soon discovered that Chaban appeared in no official disco documents; he was just the “administrator.” The legal owners of the property and the disco company were offshore shell corporations registered in the tax haven of Uruguay, the neighboring country. The listed “owner” of the enterprise was a Uruguayan “straw man” in his 70s who had no money.
Dissent Magazine, Spring 2005
The debate about cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy is a false one. The issue is not whether transnational corporations and the very rich benefit from tax cuts, but that many of them walk away from all taxes. A General Accounting Office report found that between 1996 and 2000, 61 percent of all U.S. companies paid zero federal taxes. They accomplish this primarily through “profit laundering,” a phrase that ought to be on the lips of every social critic.
