Offshore Strategies in Global Political Economy: Small Islands and the Case of the EU and OECD Harmful Tax Competition Initiatives

Woodward, Richard

doi:10.1080/09557570601003569

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Most sought to get themselves off the blacklists by adopting best practices proposed by the OECD and FATF or by issuing press releases committing themselves to compliance. Sharman, Rawlings, and others have all amply documented this process (Maurer 2005; Rawlings 2005; Sharman 2006; Webb 2004; Woodward 2006). All the while, a discursive war raged over the OECD's concepts and definitions.…”

Section: From Tax Competition To the Level Playing Fieldmentioning

confidence: 95%

Re‐Regulating Offshore Finance?

Maurer

2007

Geography Compass

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This article explores global efforts to regulate offshore finance in the wake of international concern about the effects of so‐called harmful tax competition, as well as money laundering and terrorist financing (the latter a relatively new category since September 11, 2001). In the mid‐1990s, a number of multilateral organizations, from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to the Financial Action Task Force, as well as non‐governmental organizations like Oxfam, attempted to curtail offshore finance and tax haven abuses by ‘naming and shaming’ small jurisdictions into compliance with an emerging set of international financial norms. These efforts left themselves open to charges of hypocrisy, however, because many OECD countries themselves failed – and indeed, still fail – to adhere to the standards required of offshore havens. Tax havens responded by calling for a ‘level playing field’. Nevertheless, this effort at global regulation of offshore finance has had tangible effects. This essay explores those effects and argues that the attention to offshore finance missed an opportunity by going after the jurisdictions that provided services rather than addressing the market for such services. Understanding that missed opportunity requires analytical attention to payments, as opposed to exchanges, in international finance and in the social study of finance.

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Section: From Tax Competition To the Level Playing Fieldmentioning

confidence: 95%

Re‐Regulating Offshore Finance?

Maurer

2007

Geography Compass

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“…59–60). Perhaps the most damaging criticism of the initiative was the OECD's hypocrisy in demanding compliance from nonmember states identified as tax havens, while prominent member states with equally secretive regimes – including Switzerland and Luxembourg, remained exempt (Woodward, , p. 690; Webb, , p. 807; Carroll and Kellow, , p. 140).…”

Section: The Problem Of International Tax Evasion and The Global Polimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Beyond these concerns over the effectiveness of tax information exchange ‘on request’, the most damning indictment of the TIEA framework was the fact that only a handful of requests for information have been lodged under the new regime (Palan et al., , p. 34). Indeed on the eve of the Financial Crisis, the majority of academic analysts and business commentators agreed that the OECD's HTC initiative had largely failed to achieve its primary objective of reducing the ability of secrecy jurisdictions to facilitate international tax evasion (Sharman, ; Woodward, , p. 693; Picciotto, ; Webb, , p. 823; Eden and Kurdle, ; Sullivan, ). As Palan et al.…”

Section: The Problem Of International Tax Evasion and The Global Polimentioning

confidence: 99%

Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act and American Leadership in the Campaign against International Tax Evasion: Revolution or False Dawn?

Eccleston

Gray

2014

Global Policy

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Promoting tax transparency to address international tax evasion is a central issue on the global policy agenda with G8 leaders recently declaring that 'tax authorities across the world should automatically share information to fight the scourge of tax evasion'. This growing commitment to addressing international tax evasion has a long provenance. Recently, the little-known US Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), enacted in 2010, has played a key role in this effort/the international effort. The rapid evolution and diffusion of FATCA has the potential to make significant inroads into international tax evasion and has been lauded by proponents of improved offshore tax compliance. Yet FATCA is based on a 'unilateral' model, imposed by Washington on financial institutions operating in the US, which critics argue undermines its prospects of providing an effective basis for international tax cooperation and governance. This article provides an empirical account of the origins and evolution of FATCA, arguing that while FATCA is likely to increase the capacity of the US government to tax offshore holdings of its citizens, its 'unilateral' origins and design may limit reciprocity within the international tax regime. The article concludes with an assessment of the likely consequences of FATCA in terms of its impact on both international tax evasion and on global governance more broadly. Policy Implications• The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) claims to have presided over a 'tax transparency revolution' since 2009. However, critics argue that the information exchange standard that the OECD has promoted -which only requires tax authorities to exchange tax information after being served with a detailed request -is ineffective and 'a wasted opportunity'.• Critics of the OECD argue that systemic, automatic information exchange is the only effective way to identify and address large-scale tax evasion.• In 2010, the US proposed its own FATCA standard -a more rigorous and potentially more effective standard for the automatic exchange of tax information.• The FATCA regime is likely to have a number of significant yet potentially contradictory consequences. On one hand, it has added weight to the case for adopting automatic tax information exchange as the new international standard. However, it may undermine important multilateral initiatives such as the OECD Global Forum.In the aftermath of the Financial Crisis, so-called offshore tax havens and how best to combat international tax evasion have received unprecedented political attention. Promoting tax transparency and restricting harmful tax competition was a peripheral global policy issue for decades. However, amid the ongoing public debt crises and associated austerity that have engulfed much of the developed world since 2008, this policy area is now a prominent issue on the international agenda. Yet despite recent attention, the most appropriate strategies for addressing international tax evasion and their ultimate effectiveness remain contes...

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“…Nevertheless, recent years have witnessed remarkable progress with regard to international tax cooperation, culminating in the publication of a new Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) global standard on the automatic exchange of information (AEI) in 2014, which, by now, almost 100 countries have promised to adopt, including several well‐known secrecy jurisdictions . Clearly, the AEI will not eradicate harmful tax competition, but given the pessimistic assessments of the viability of international tax cooperation in the mid‐2000s, this progress in international tax cooperation is remarkable (Palan ; Webb ; Eden & Kudrle ; Woodward ; Sharman ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Swiss banking secrecy and the problem of international cooperation in tax matters: A nut too hard to crack?

Emmenegger

2015

Regulation & Governance

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How was Swiss resistance to international cooperation in tax matters overcome? This article argues that while Swiss banks are structurally dependent on access to the United States (US) financial market, Switzerland is structurally dependent on the economic welfare of its largest banks. Taking advantage of a tax evasion scandal in the midst of the global financial crisis, this indirect dependence gave US law enforcement authorities the opportunity to exercise pressure on Switzerland by threatening to criminally indict Switzerland's largest bank. The tax evasion scandal and subsequent Swiss concessions to the US had two important consequences for international tax cooperation. First, the scandal provided a focal point for collective action that allowed other countries to coordinate their strategies and direct them against the country that had been identified as uncooperative. Second, the scandal undermined Switzerland's ability to impede collective action because the bank's public admission of wrongdoing demonstrated the necessity of international tax cooperation.

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Offshore Strategies in Global Political Economy: Small Islands and the Case of the EU and OECD Harmful Tax Competition Initiatives

Cited by 11 publications

References 22 publications

Re‐Regulating Offshore Finance?

Re‐Regulating Offshore Finance?

Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act and American Leadership in the Campaign against International Tax Evasion: Revolution or False Dawn?

Swiss banking secrecy and the problem of international cooperation in tax matters: A nut too hard to crack?

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