Research by the economist Gabriel Zucman shows that tax havens are big business. He concludes that they substantially increase the after-tax income of the top 0.01 percent of the world’s population and that they enable U.S. and other corporations to evade taxes on nearly half their income from foreign operations.
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Offshore wealth as % of GDP. Source: Gabriel Zucman. Click to enlarge.
Zucman is a respected economist I’m not able to evaluate his estimates based on my own knowledge, or to meaningfully compare his figures with those of the Tax Justice Network and other sources. But there’s no doubt that ultra-rich individuals and powerful corporations are able to keep a lot of their wealth hidden from view.
Source: finfacts
LINKS
Why have we built a paradise for offshore billionaires? by Thomas Frank for The Guardian. [Added 11/14/2017]
Who Owns the Wealth in Tax Havens? Macro Evidence and Implications for Global Inequality by Annette Alstadsæter, Neils Jahannesen and Gabriel Zucman for the National Bureau of Economic Research.
US$7.6tn hidden in tax havens – almost half annual US GDP by Michael Hennigan for finfacts.
The Finance Curse and the Danger to Countries that Become Tax Havens by Brooke Harrington for The Atlantic. [Added Later]
Tags: Gabriel Zucman, Tax Havens
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