Bermuda and the Cayman Islands head a list of the world's 15 worst corporate tax havens drawn up by the charity Oxfam, while Ireland is ranked in sixth place, one slot above Luxembourg
Other UK- linked territories also feature, with Jersey placed at 12, Barbados at 13 and the British Virgin Islands at number 15.
Oxfam says it analysed key practices in compiling the list for its ‘Tax Battles’ report, such as offering unfair and unproductive tax incentives and zero or extremely low corporate tax rates, as well as failure to cooperate with international processes to combat tax avoidance including measures to increase financial transparency.
Ana Arendar, Oxfam's head of inequality, said: ‘Allowing our overseas territories and crown dependencies to operate as tax havens undermines Britain's efforts to be an outward-facing, responsible member of the international community. It's time to end this embarrassing contradiction in our own backyard.’
Oxfam warns that the use of anonymous shell companies in tax havens is distorting the global economy and the charity says the pressure to compete by offering tax incentives to multinationals costs developing countries $138bnn annually.
Oxfam is calling for governments to work together to improve financial transparency so it is clear how much tax companies pay in all countries, to end unproductive tax incentives and to set corporate tax at a fair level that contributes to the collective good.
In a separate report, the Tax Justice Network (TJN) argues that the OECD’s proposals for creating a level playing field for emerging economies on tax transparency have been badly handled and the current effect is to exacerbate the inequality in global taxing rights.
The major problem, it says, has been the OECD’s decision to place limits on access to the data provided via country by country reporting (CBCR). The pressure group claims this effectively means that the only organisations that get to see the report are the tax authority in the country where the relevant multinational has its headquarters, and other tax authorities that it chooses to share the information with, subject to various conditions including limitations on the use the data can be put to.
Alex Cobham chief executive, said: this is ‘completely unacceptable’, claiming: ‘As long as the OECD or its rich country members continue to block access to country-by-country reporting data, lower-income countries should take whatever steps necessary to ensure they can obtain it. Policymakers around the world should aim to short-circuit these damaging inequalities by simply passing laws that require full publication of CBCR data, as we originally proposed.’
