Tag Archives: Panama papers

The worldwide trend of attacking the use of corporations as a way to reduce or defer taxation for individuals

Introduction – The war against corporations and the shareholders of those corporations
Corporations as entities that are separate from their shareholder/owners
As every law students knows, a corporation is a legal entity that is separate from its owner. As a legal entity that is separate from its owner, a corporation is capable of holding assets, carrying on a business and investing in a way that results in separation of the shareholder(s) from the business itself. It is a mistake to infer that the corporation’s status as a separate legal entity means that the corporation’s income will not be taxed to its shareholders.
Corporations as legal instruments of tax deferral
When corporate tax rates are lower than individual tax rates, there is incentive for individuals to earn and invest through corporations rather than to earn and invest as individuals. In other words, in certain circumstances, corporations can be used to pay less taxes.
Corporations as instruments of tax evasion
In many jurisdictions is it possible to create a Corporation and NOT disclose the identities of the beneficial owners. Because of this circumstance:
1. Corporations (as was made clear in the “Panama Papers Story”) can be used to hide income and assets for either legitimate or illegitimate reasons; and
2. Corporations can be used to avoid the attribution of income earned by the corporation to the shareholders.
Corporations and the rise of @TaxHavenUSA
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Tax Haven or Tax Heaven: Introduction – Were the "Panama Papers" about #offshore "tax evasion" or "tax avoidance"?


The above tweet references an article written by Tony Burman, which appeared in the Toronto Star (and other papers) on April 9, 2016.
The article included:

The global aftershocks of the so-called Panama Papers are only beginning to be felt. More revelations are expected in the weeks ahead, and this will only add to the uproar.
The prime minister of Iceland has already been dumped. Other government leaders have been embarrassed. Several countries have announced inquiries into the secretive world of offshore tax evasion. And public anxiety about the corrupt coddling of the world’s superwealthy “1%” is showing signs of turning into red-hot anger.
But we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not as if we didn’t already know that the world’s political and business elites frequently cheat and steal, that our governments are swindled out of trillions of dollars of revenue and, as a consequence of this greed, the vast majority of people suffer from a painful culture of austerity so these freeloaders can get richer. We already knew that.
However, it is the disgusting detail contained in this week’s revelation of leaked documents that is so revolting — and, of course, the appalling fact that so much of this is technically “legal.”
With their own interests in mind, politicians and business leaders in many countries have worked quietly in the dead of night to make this so. The result is that, more than ever, taxes now appear to be primarily for the little people.
The documents come from an influential Panama-based law firm. They include 11.5 million internal records disclosing the financial secrets of heads of state, billionaires, drug lords, celebrities and others.

While expressing outrage at the part of the “Panama Papers” that represents tax evasion, Mr. Burman identifies that much of the revelations of the “Panama Papers” was the result of clear and deliberate government policies and laws. In other words, the story of the “Panama Papers” is mostly about “legal tax avoidance” and ” NOT illegal “tax evasion”. Therefore, it is entirely unreasonable and counterproductive to focus on “tax evasion” and exclude “tax avoidance” from the discussion.
Nevertheless, when it comes to tax evasion …


The OECD’s Q and A about the “Panama Papers” reveals:
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Tax Haven or Tax Heaven 6: Must read interview with @FranHendy – The movement of wealth transparency and the right to privacy


 

Tax Haven or Tax Heaven 1: @FranHendy and @BarrieMcKenna see “Panama Privacy Leak” as about more than #offshore witch hunt


The above tweet references the following article by Barrie McKenna of the Globe and Mail. The comments to the article include:
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