UKC

It's certainly nice seeing the EU twist themselves in knots over this:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/06/luxembourg-jean-claude-junc...

"French, German and Dutch finance ministers have rounded on Luxembourg"

well let's see:

"Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, said the revelations about Luxembourg’s secret tax deals showed that the Grand Duchy had “a lot to do” to meet global standards."

oooohhh a lot to do....that's serious.

"The calls for Luxembourg to stop arranging special deals that help corporations avoid tax came after a vast cache of 28,000 leaked tax papers from the Grand Duchy revealed the country had been rubber-stamping tax avoidance on an industrial scale".

Rubber stamped...on an industrial scale.....how is that possible?

The French finance minister, Michel Sapin, said such deals were “no longer acceptable for any country”. He added: “I wish that in a few years we never have to talk about something like this again.”

Ouch!

The Netherlands finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who is also chair of the Eurogroup of all 18 finance ministers in the eurozone, said "We still have some work here.”

That should sort it out!


:p

In reply to Morgan Woods:

The EU has been very disappointing when it comes to dealing with tax havens.
In many ways the US has done a lot better by imposing the proper sanctions to curb this kind of practices, which is kind of worrying.

In reply to RomTheBear:



Apart from its own tax havens of course, google Delaware.

In reply to Morgan Woods:

Hardly new.

In a slightly related note: Many, many years ago when I worked on financial software it was well known among the contracting crowd that you could work a couple of years in Luxembourg and never pay tax just by moving house to a different country every few months. The commute was never a problem.

In reply to SteveD:


I am no expert but from what I understand the status of Delaware as a tax haven has been severely undermined by other states legislating to prevent losing revenues through Delaware.

I think it's nowhere near the kind arrangements you see where big corporation pay nearly zero taxes, in countries like Luxembourg or some British overseas territories.

In reply to davidbeynon:


Indeed, I was really suprised when I started IT contracting to find out that many of my colleague in the same business were all using offshore arrangements and pay no tax whatsoever. And these are small one man businesses, so I can't even begin to imagine what's happening on an industrial scale in bigger corporations.

It's really crazy, and there is no excuse to not shut down these tax haven, they are usually small vulnerable countries, it would be really easy to stop them, if our governments actually wanted to.

In reply to RomTheBear:

Something I was told that stuck with me is to look for the loopholes the MPs are using, as they are the ones that never get closed.