According to the Tax Justice Network, an international coalition of researchers promoting transparency in finance, taxpayers across the world hold about $ 11.
The UK-based Tax Justice Network states that 60% of all capital flight is caused by multinational companies' internal mispricing, with just 3-5% spirited away by the political elite.
The amount of money involved in this global shell game is staggering: _ Between 30 percent and 40 percent of global trade is billed outside the country where it actually takes place, the London-based Tax Justice Network said.
Their organisation, Tax Justice Network has been adopted by charities, some sympathetic governments (Norway) and extends to heavyweight officials in the Obama camp who have promised to squash tax havens if elected.
This is somebody who's exceptionally rich taking the opportunity to shift his tax burden to somebody else, but then asking governments around the world to spend that tax take in the way that he would like," says Richard Murphy, a British-based adviser to the Tax Justice Network, an international lobbying group.
John Christensen, director of the inter national secretariat of the Tax Justice Network, and Prem Sikka, Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex, yesterday attacked the UK Government for not clamping down on the activity.
LOW-TAX ZONES such as Hong Kong, Ireland, and various Caribbean nations are routinely blasted as "tax havens" by such groups as the Tax Justice Network, to say nothing of politicians, who resent them for siphoning away economic activity and depriving high-tax nations of "their" precious tax revenues.
Dan Mitchell, Senior Fellow, Economist, The Cato Institute * William Kattan, Bermuda Monetary Authority, Director of Legal Services and Enforcement * Andy Rickman, ILDD Director and Co-Founder, Partner & General Counsel at Hagen, Streiff, Newton & Oshiro Accountants, PC "HSNO" * Jack Blum, Tax Justice Network * Matthew Blake, ILDD Founder and Chairman, Chief Compliance Officer at Hagen, Streiff, Newton & Oshiro Accountants, PC "HSNO" This upcoming forum is particularly timely given the proposed Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act and the large recent settlements in the financial and insurance sectors: (1) UBS AG, Switzerland's largest bank, paid $780 million to U.
