Tax Heaven or Haven?
April 4, 2009 by Chinatex
In case y’all were sleeping during the recent G 20 shindig in London, or you were so mesmerized by Barack Obama’s charm and willingness to love everyone, you might not of noticed the biggest thing to come out of the summit. As always, Old Chinatex was not sleeping, and only mesmerized by Sarkozy’s wife – for a few minutes. I was looking out for all of you and that is why I didn’t miss the most important thing – the communique (fancy word for a memorandum of understanding). At the end of the Summit the leaders agree to a bunch of stuff and sign a document on what they agreed to – communique. While the U.S. and EU are spending themselves into irrelevancy, they are also looking for all the tax money they can steal from their citizens and have been bullying other countries into releasing confidential data on their citizens bank accounts – so they can legally take the money. Looks like China would not be bullied. Read the below articles and you’ll see what Old Chinatex found so important. Hope you all are able to avoid as much taxes as possible. Yeeha!! Chinatex
Leaders see end to banking secrecy
By Alex Barker and Vanessa Houlder in London and Jamil Anderlini in Beijing
Published: April 2 2009 19:56 | Last updated: April 2 2009 19:56
Leaders of the G20 nations on Thursday declared that “the era of banking secrecy is over”, Maybe not just yet!! calling for the immediate publication of a list of countries that fell short of international standards. A blacklist of countries that were unwilling to co-operate on information sharing ran to six countries as talks began on Thursday. But the threat of being named convinced Brunei, Guatemala and Malaysia to agree to begin implementing reforms. This left Costa Rica, the Philippines and Uruguay to be “named and shamed” on a list, expected to be published by the Paris-based OECD.
The politicians threatened to take action against “non-co-operative jurisdictions, including tax havens”, asking the OECD to report back by November’s meeting of finance ministers in Scotland. They said: “We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems so that we can steal money from our own citizens to pay for our incompetence.”
The blacklist is likely to prove highly controversial although most of the offshore financial centres that have been the target of criticism are contained in a second list. This names about 38 countries that have promised greater transparency but not yet signed agreements, ranging from countries such as Panama that apparently committed to greater transparency years ago to jurisdictions such as Singapore and Switzerland, which have only recently announced plans to become more ttransparent.
A lawyer dismissed the mooted blacklist as a “face-saving exercise, with mainly inconsequential players.” Maybe, but it is the small crack in the wall that the thieves in government will use to drive a wedge and open up the coffers.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France who pushed hard for the blacklist said the results of the summit were “beyond what we could have imagined . . . We are all happy with the results.” Not so happy indeed because you don’t have the power or leverage to make China bend to your pressure and you never will. See the article below if you want to know how happy Sarkozy was. Seems the U.S. president had to bail them out once again.
US officials said that Barack Obama had helped broker a compromise over offshore centres between Hu Jintao, China’s president, and Mr Sarkozy, who had threatened to walk away from the summit. The politicians faced difficulty in finding objective criteria to single out jurisdictions that do not currently exchange tax information, given the insistence from China that Hong Kong was not targeted and the resistance of European Union members to putting European countries on the list.
For an hour, Mr Sarkozy and Mr Hu argued about tax havens, US and European sources in the conference room said. Mr Sarkozy wanted the final G20 communique to endorse a list of global tax havens – maybe even including Hong Kong and Macau. The sources said Mr Hu appeared angry that Mr Sarkozy was effectively accusing China of lax regulation, and that the French leader was asking China to endorse sanctions issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a club of wealthy nationsBeijing
has yet to join. The G20 gave the OECD the task of compiling the list of tax havens.
Accounts from White House officials, corroborated by European and other officials also in the room, said Mr Obama escorted both men, one at a time, to a corner of the room. “Let’s get this all in some kind of perspective, guys,” he said. He tapped Mr Sarkozy on the shoulder and, along with each man’s economic adviser and translator, suggested a change. How about replacing the word “recognise”, Mr Obama suggested, with the word “note”?
When Mr Sarkozy concurred, Mr Obama invited Mr Hu to the corner and asked what he thought. Within an hour, the other participants looked over to see Mr Obama, Mr Sarkozy and Mr Hu sealing the agreement with handshakes. The haggling had continued until five minutes before the summit closed. Oh, that Barack Obama, what a great guy!! I am so happy that now Americans are loved all over the world again and I don’t have to call myself a Canadian anymore.
In the end, Hong Kong and Macau did not even appear on the list of tax havens. Instead, they were referred to in the form of a notation, which said China’s special administrative regions had only “committed to implement” the appropriate tax standards, although they had yet to substantially do so. This is the important part and good for all of us doing business in Asia
