Positive thinking

Ronen Palan, City, University of London The so-called Paradise Papers may sound familiar – leaked documents from a law firm that specialises in offshore services reveal how the global elite avoids paying taxes. Even the name has the same ring to it as last year’s Panama Papers expose. But the Paradise Papers are different, reflecting the complexity of the global offshore tax system. Panama is generally considered among tax haven experts as one of the least reformed corners of the offshore world. International rules regarding tax evasion and avoidance are intended to help national governments to pursue their own offenders, but the Panama Papers revealed that the country was being used primarily by the business and political elites of countries like Russia, China and many more in Latin America and Asia; countries where the governments are closely linked to business and which are less likely to use tools provided by new international rules to pursue offenders. Hence, rel...

Javier Garcia-Bernardo, University of Amsterdam ; Eelke Heemskerk, University of Amsterdam ; Frank Takes, Leiden University , and Jan Fichtner, University of Amsterdam First came the Panama Papers , then the Bahamas-Leaks . Journalists continue to shed light on and raise a public outcry over the offshore financial centres that corporations use to reduce their tax bill – something that is still being challenged in court . A new study has now uncovered all the world’s corporate tax havens and, for the first time, revealed the intermediary countries that companies use to funnel their money into these places. Published on July 24 in the academic journal Scientific Reports , the paper Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers: Conduits and Sinks in the Global Corporate Ownership Network shows that offshore finance is not the exclusive business of exotic, far-flung places such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. The Netherlands and the United Kingdom also play a crucial – alt...