A new report from the Tax Justice Network (The Price of Offshore Revisited) has documented the staggering scale of money that is being hidden in tax-havens. According to James Henry, a former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, the total amount of wealth that is managed by the top 50 private banks has reached between $21 and $32 trillion. Remarkably, around half this amount is held by just 92,000 individuals.
The article in the Observer about the report has got an amazing 1925 comments from readers. Clearly, this is an issue that is generating more and more concern - and quite rightly.
I've said this before, but I will say it again. The first country that scraps conventional taxes (income tax, corporation tax, sales taxes) and replaces them with a variable-rate universal financial transaction tax would probably see a substantial proportion of all that money flood in. What are we waiting for?
"What are we waiting for?"
ReplyDeleteThe erradication of greed from the human condition?