MEDIA MONDAY / THE REAL DEEP $TATE$

The investigating journalists, who brought the world The Panama Papers, have produced an extraordinary white paper report titled “What is a tax haven?  Offshore Finance, Explained.”  Four years after the Panama Papers, honest taxpayers learn why International Consortium of Investigative Journalists continues to report on tax havens and those who exploit them.  It’s an excellent primer on offshore secrecy and how tax dodging that harms the rest of us. No one wants to pay high taxes, but if tax havens were brought under control, all of us would pay lower taxes.

GUEST BLOG / By Will Fitzgibbon, ICIJ Investigations, Icij.org--Tax revenue keeps civilization afloat. But not all taxpayers play by the same set of rules. With the help of lawyers, accountants, white-shoe professionals, and complicit Western governments, the wealthy and well connected have avoided paying trillions of dollars in taxes. The rest of us cover the difference — or, more commonly, can’t, leaving treasuries bereft of monies needed to build roads, schools, and tackle existential threats like climate change and global pandemics.

By some estimates, about 10 percent of the total output of all the economies in the world is parked in offshore financial centers, held by shell companies that exist only on paper. The cost to governments, in lost revenue, is estimated to exceed $800 billion a year.

Tax havens make it all possible.  Click here.