This website is concerned with the problems of tax havens. There are two issues. The first issue is the secrecy provided by jurisdictions and this enables money laundering and tax evasion. The other issue is tax avoidance where the artificiality of setting up a company where it has no economic activity should not give a tax advantage. There are many groups campaigning on these questions — the Tax Justice Network and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists being two of them. My main contribution is the Knotweed Newsletter, which is intended to be objective and factual.
The sums of money are truly vast in terms of tax avoided and money laundered. The issues transcend the more emotive problems of murder and knife crime, nurses’ pay and the price of houses. However, once one has passed the headlines, the issues become detailed and complex.
The present system has arisen for reasons that were good at the time and embodies virtues such as privacy, freedom and sovereignty. Any solution must recognise that these forces have brought us to the wrong answer and there must be the political will to say this. Just as there are many aspects of the problem, the solution will have many parts, but to show the kind of thing that must be done, I put forward the following proposal.
In the UK, Companies House keeps a public register about UK companies. [ It is intended that this information will be checked and validated, but that is another story. ] The British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies register their own companies and the information publicly available is much, much, less. I am proposing that companies in these territories to be registered under UK law and for Companies House UK to be responsible for their registration and the publication of the associated information. Of course, the Territories and Dependencies would scream, but the proposal would be cleansing, lawful, practical and just.
So here is the Knotweed Newsletter:-
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