OFF-SHORE FUNDS - MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?

The Guardian, my favourite independent newspaper, possibly the best newspaper in the world, reports the OECD has recalculated bank deposits in Tax Havens at $2.7 trillion – down from the 2009 estimated $11 to $18 trillion. The OECD presented the new numbers to the G20 meeting in Cannes. Does this dramatic 75% fall in (reports of) tax-free cash sloshing around the globe mean we should abandon attempts to repatriate the funds and invest them into industries in the originating nations?

SLIDE 11 - The $18 trillion Tax- Haven cash is 30% of the annual global $60 trillion production. The GGDP surplus p.a. is about 1% - for 30 years siphoned to tax-havens (30 years x 1% = 30%).

http://www.noelhodson.com/Money-Wars-2012-V5SHORT.pdf

  

No – actually. In 2010, from 2009 statistics (we all know that all statistics are wrong, but they are all we have) in Money-Wars (slide 11 of 23) we calculated that the OECD’s $18 trillion made sense, and it forms a part of the better documented $82 trillion in the Bond Markets (the Free Markets), that slosh around the globe – ever hopeful of finding a totally safe nation that can be fooled into being on the edge of bankruptcy and thus have to pay 7.5% for the next 50 years to Bond holders.

The sensible logic is that the annual surpluses from our national economies, about 1% a year, for the past 30 years have been siphoned off-shore – with tax relief given in the home nations.  The 1% surplus is the liquidity of any economy – which has gone missing and been siphoned away.

It is in the annual siphoning paperwork (transfer pricing, officers, controllers, resident status) that long established tax laws are most likely to have been breached, creating Back-Duty tax cases, which assess the tax-relief granted, the ongoing unpaid taxes, plus compound interest, plus penalties – that in most cases add up to the total capital siphoned out.  

So – the apparent 75% reduction actually reflects that funny-money is constantly shifting from tax-havens to Bond, Shares & Commodity Markets, to on-shore banks, etc. The $18 trillion siphoned in the past 30 years, could and should be subjected to forensic audits – and repatriated. The secret and intelligence services could easily track it down, as few bank computer operators will risk making fraudulent entries to obscure the trails.

Another Guardian article, about Facebook, tells us 2 billion people are on-line, and that 1 in 3 use Facebook. Maybe Facebook can track the Funny-Money.

TAX AND ECONOMICS ARTICLES 29TH APR 13