Friday 26 August 2011

On tax havens...

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Just a brief note - a comment if you will - on the matter of tax havens. Let's be clear folks, tax havens are a myth, a fiction, a scary bogeyman dreamed up by people who would prefer that governments were free to rob any of their citizens blind.

We are told - by people like Nichoas Shaxton - that these "treasure islands" are places of deep and dark sinfulness. Places filled with crime and deception wherein banks, shady drug dealers and other charlatans of the business world - and big corporations who set up ranks of subsidiaries simply so as to avoid tax and regulation - peddle their dirty trade. And we must not let them avoid tax or regulation!

See those last two words? That's the problem. Tax. Regulation. Not sin, evil or the desire of these wicked men to grind the faces of the poor and downtrodden. It is high taxes - both personal and corporate - coupled with excessive regulation that creates the offshore world, that makes tax havens work.  And the solution?

Cut taxes. Reduce regulation. Pretty simple really. Problem sorted. Doesn't need a whole book now does it!

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1 comment:

Demetrius said...

You can only cut taxes if all are paying their whack. If the top end are not paying and they command an increasing proportion of wealth then your options are limited. Indeed there is plenty of fat to cut out but it will go nowhere near the increasing liabilities. What is worse is the nature of the extraction from many real activities. Where did the Southern Cross money go and who is suffering in consequence? As a rider, how many of these have you visited, some are not so nice for those at the wrong end.