As I watched the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games last night it occurred to me just how many participating states are considered to be tax havens. My timeline became active in the theme and as a result I tweeted this:
Credit to @daniel_nash for renaming the #CommonwealthGames the #HiddenWealth games because of number of tax havens involved.
Daniel's suggestion was made in reaction to my tweets.
Based on the Tax Justice Network Financial Secrecy Index (full disclosure: I directed the first FSI, but not this version) the full list of participants that are tax havens based on the secrecy that they offer are as follows, with their rankings shown:
Rank | Secrecy Jurisdiction | Secrecy Score |
76 | Samoa | 88 |
45 | Vanuatu | 87 |
28 | Seychelles | 85 |
65 | St Lucia | 84 |
73 | Brunei Darussalam | 84 |
26 | Barbados | 81 |
12 | Malaysia (Labuan) | 80 |
14 | Bermuda | 80 |
19 | Mauritius | 80 |
35 | Bahamas | 80 |
52 | Belize | 80 |
67 | Antigua & Barbuda | 80 |
80 | St Kitts & Nevis | 80 |
49 | Gibraltar | 79 |
77 | Dominica | 79 |
79 | Maldives | 79 |
81 | Nauru | 79 |
62 | St Vincent & the Grenadines | 78 |
63 | Turks & Caicos Islands | 78 |
70 | Grenada | 78 |
78 | Cook Islands | 77 |
61 | Anguilla | 76 |
9 | Jersey | 75 |
60 | Botswana | 73 |
4 | Cayman Islands | 70 |
5 | Singapore | 70 |
15 | Guernsey | 67 |
34 | Isle of Man | 67 |
20 | British Virgin Islands | 66 |
57 | Ghana | 66 |
17 | Canada | 54 |
36 | South Africa | 53 |
41 | Cyprus | 52 |
48 | New Zealand | 52 |
44 | Australia | 47 |
32 | India | 46 |
64 | Malta | 44 |
21 | United Kingdom | 40 |
Clicking on each name should bring up their FSI report.
I generally cut off at 60 when deciding whether a place is a tax haven but there are exceptions. New Zealand , Cyprus and Malta all sell very specific tax haven law abuse. And the UK is, of course, the hub of this network, making London the epicentre of this arrangement, which is why the Tax Justice Network wrote to the Queen about it a year ago.
The opening of the games was marked by a fund raising gesture for UNICEF. Unfortunately the tax haven activities of so many Commonwealth states - the Hiddenwealth - will undermine any good that appeal will do. It is corruption that undermines developing countries - but most especially that facilitated by tax havens and the lawyers, accountants and bankers who populate them. And have no doubt, children suffer as a result.
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This is often the case- charities like UNICEF are trying to offset the effects of Third World debt and poverty created by the very financial set up that supports it (not counting many ordinary people who give to UNICEF).
Red Nose Day money management was implicated in dodgy investments which is another form of this paradox -charitable money created out of the very mechanism that create the need!
Often things aren’t just problems, they are paradoxes -and we need to see it before we get to the root of things.
“My timeline became actice in the theme and as a result I tweeted this:”
I hope there’s a spelling mistake in there, but even so, I’m not Twitterate: so could you please explain what on earth this means? I am genuinely perplexed.
Active; sorry
The rest…..life is too short
Sorry
Richard Murphy is using the Commonwealth games as an excuse to attack jurisdictions he knows nothing about. All over the internet he writes rubbish like this on blog sites and gets paid for it. He has been doing this since 2005 that I can see.
In the UK you have ATOS, Electric and water companies all owing UK tax, placing monies overseas, he does little about any of this. He attacks the Isle of Man causing a huge reduction in VAT which has meant job losses to local residents including closing down Police stations and others all out of a job because he believes that everyone living there is avoiding paying UK Tax when most are ordinary people on the minimum wage of £6-40 per hour. I have written to him and pointed this out, he will not reply. I asked him what companies or individuals does he believes resides on the Isle of Man that owes the UK Government tax – He refuses to answer me? If you have tax evaders in a country you go after them, you do not punish an entire nation making the ordinary people suffer. Richard Murphy will not answer this point. He answers nothing
Michael
You have mailed me many times on these issues; I think harassment is a fair description of your behaviour.
And despite what you claim you are simply wrong. Let me take power companies as an example. I single handedly exposed Npower’s tax avoidance and then helped make a Channel 4 Dispatches on the power companies. What more might you ask of one person?
And no’ I have not been at the forefront of campaigns on ATOS because other great campaigners have been.
As for the Isle of Man and VAT I lobbied no one and wrote to not a single politician. I simply pointed out on this blog that £200 million of the UK’s money was being used to subsidise the Isle of Man to be a tax haven when it had GDP per head greater than the UK.
The argument was factually accurate and compelling: your government can pay for all the services you need if it chooses. The argument respects the Isle of Man’s autonomy. It pointed out an anachronism. It resulted in change because as an argument it was unassailable.
That is all the answer you need.
Now, very politely, stop harassing me.
Richard
Couldn’t help but notice that Cayman Islands was described by the commentators in the opening ceremony as a ‘tax have’, with Bermuda being described as ‘another major financial centre’ without a hint of irony, given the financial status of so many other commonwealth Nations- including our own. Surely they should have made it clear that ‘other tax havens are available’
The 85,000 population of the Isle of Man has received unprecedented wealth in the form of £200million per annum – for a decade or so – of over-payment by the UK from the VAT Common Purse. Over the same period its population has excelled in various sports including motorcycling and cycling.
When you have all that money sloshing around, you can purchase top notch equipment and spend time training and have your parents time off work to nurture their children in sporting events. The sports centres and facilities are second to none too and of course very expensive, but that is – or most certainly was – all very affordable.
I don’t mean to offend anyone or lessen the wonderful achievements for which the Government lay on splendid annual awards ceremenonies, but the various sporting successes of the Isle of Man can be directly related to its various financial achievements ie – having the UK Government give them the equivalent of a free gratis significant lottery win for a few hundred weeks in a row.
It’s always nice to see an underdog nation achieve sporting success at such events. But it has been many years since the Isle of Man as a nation was any sort of underdog. Financially certainly not and in this respect certainly not on merit and morals.
Thank you
Michael
you’ve missed the point in an awful lot of ways, but, in particular, in your comment that Richard has somehow “attacked” your island, resulting in losses to ordinary people.
You chose to vote in a Government which based its entire success on being a tax haven. Put simply, this involves gypping other people out of what is rightfully theirs.
The IoM doesn’t make its money from people living on the Island & paying a low rate of tax. It makes it from people living in the UK but pretending that certain transactions go through the IoM so as to pay a low rate of tax.
This pretence is what you sell. It is a parasitical existence.
I’m sorry if the effects of this are causing suffering to decent people in the IoM who are nothing to do with the Financial Services industry, but the answer is in your own hands. Vote out the financiers in the Manx parliament.
I am not hassling anyone. The entire Isle of Man is being punished because you believe it is a nation full of UK Tax Evaders. I asked you to name companies or individuals you believe reside here that owe your UK Government tax, You failed to answer this question? You do not punish an entire nation, you go after those that you believe owe your Government Tax? You showed no regard for the deaths in my family and how I am facing huge charges in the future that means I am likely to lose my home. I have done nothing wrong to you, or your Government, yet I am being punished. Over the years you have become very wealthy attacking jurisdictions, that is how you make your fortune and you blow your own trumpet when you succeed.
Michael
These are issues you need to take up with your government, not me. You live in a democracy. Demand it delivers what you want.
Further comments of this sort will be deleted under the terms of the comments policy
Richard
Hi Rich, big fan of this blog. Keep up! Saw a piece recently on tax that was a good laugh. Seems it’s becoming more of a societal sticking point…which can only be a good thing. Like I said, it’s good read
http://www.refractory-online.com/optional-taxation-social-contract/
Michael
I appreciate English may not be your first language, but you should try & get some translation help instead of just posting a load of incomprehensible stuff on someone’s blog.
Regards
e
Addressed to eriugenus: Which part of my statement is not English? Is that all you have to say on the matter. I was told there were people back in 2007 in the UK Government that were jealous of the way the Isle of Man works and were going to make life difficult for us. It has happened? The same man told me that your sick and vulnerable would be persecuted to save monies, this too has happened. The man that told me this was an old truck driver with cancer who has been in various conflicts around the world and who bore witness to atrocities in the Belgian congo where pregnant women were cut open. In the UK you have over 1100 sick and vulnerable people who have died at the hands of ATOS up to September 2012, ATOS have received £3 BILLION pounds of UK tax payers monies of which much has gone overseas. No one has been brought to justice for that and I see virtually nothing mentioned on here about the monies going overseas. It stops in August 2014 only to be resumed again in 2015 by another contractor. This started in 2008 and should have ended the minute deaths were coming to light, however the UK Government carried on for 6 years, who is worse, our government or yours? What about your energy companies and water companies placing its profits in overseas accounts to avoid paying UK Tax whilst many of your people are freezing in their own homes all in the name of profit and greed. You think it is wonderful to attack the Isle of Man, yet this till goes on. Whoever in here said the Manx Government was funding our athletes and TT riders is wrong. They fund and train themselves and TT riders are sponsored by firms, not our Government. Our Government does not give them anything.
I post this to provide opportunity for others to comment
The claims made are either wildly wrong or have been answered already
I remind Michael of the comments policy
Michael
your comments suggest to me that your heart is in the right place but I’m not convinced you’re thinking things through.
The IoM can continue being a catspaw for the City of London, in which case it ill becomes you to castigate us in the UK for the evils of ATOS, or any initiative pushed through by the self-same financiers, or it could try standing up for itself.
I’m happy to believe that the vast majority of Manx people want their Island to stand on its own 3 legs, not just be a conduit through which dodgy gelt gets recycled to & from the City of London, but its up to you to vote out the financiers that control YOUR government.
Your attacks on Richard suggest someone more interested in hiding the symptoms than treating the cause.
There are plenty of dodgy associations and financial smells being emitted from Westminster these days.
Eriugenus, to be absolutely fair, is it not time that the people of the UK voted out its very own financiers.
Both are true