Tax Havens

LONDON April 3 -- One day after world leaders threatened tax havens with sanctions, a host of countries on a freshly published "list of shame" scrambled to get off it even as questions surfaced over China's maneuvers to exclude Hong Kong and Macau. The Group of 20 industrialized and developing nations at an economic summit here Thursday agreed to end "an era of banking secrecy," rooting out hundreds of billions of dollars estimated to be hidden from tax authorities in offshore banks.

The latest deficit-reduction plan offered by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson supports the interests of big business at the expense of the United States' small businesses by calling for adoption of a territorial tax system. In two recent polls, small-business owners have soundly rejected making abuse of offshore tax havens by multinational organizations legal and permanent. A March poll sponsored by the American Sustainable Business Council and Main Street Alliance found that 85 percent of those surveyed, including...

GENEVA, July 16 -- A U.S. Senate subcommittee accused banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein of helping wealthy Americans evade billions in taxes each year, and urged tougher laws to combat offshore tax havens around the world. In a report released late Wednesday, the Senate subcommittee on investigations estimated that offshore abuses were costing U.S. taxpayers about $100 billion a year. It recommended reforms to squeeze tax cheats, including more stringent U.S. requirements for foreign banks and harsher penalties for institutions...

How the investigation was done This article is the result of a collaboration between The Washington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Center for Public Integrity. ICIJ obtained 2.5 million records relating to more than 120,000 companies and trusts in 10 offshore jurisdictions. The records represent the largest collection of internal records about the offshore financial system ever assembled and analyzed by a media organization.

Before Mitt Romney's Cayman Islands investments became an issue in the Republican presidential campaign, a senior Republican senator cited similar financial arrangements as cause for concern about a nominee for a top position at the Treasury Department. Jeffrey A. Goldstein, who had worked at a private equity firm, was running into tough questions from Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2010 when President Obama gave Goldstein a recess appointment as undersecretary for domestic finance, bypassing the Senate...

President Obama won reelection in part by beating up on his opponent for receiving big corporate payouts in exchange for dubious work and for socking away money in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. So it's a bit, well, rich that Obama chose as his new Treasury secretary a man who received a big corporate payout for dubious work and who socked away money in the Cayman Islands. This awkward fact pattern forced a role reversal Wednesday on Capitol Hill, as Obama's nominee, Jack Lew, came...

BERLIN, Feb. 22 -- European leaders on Sunday pledged to establish global oversight of hedge funds, crack down on tax havens and beef up other rules as part of a reformation of the international monetary system. Leaders from eight European countries, meeting in Berlin, said they had agreed on broad principles for bolstering the regulation of global finance in advance of a summit of the world's leading powers April 2 in London. "A clear message and concrete action are necessary to engender new...

Waterloo, Iowa's sixth-largest city, is a blue-collar community located off Interstate 380, the "Avenue of the Saints" that runs from St. Louis to St. Paul, Minn. Go a few blocks from the Crossroads Mall in west Waterloo, you find something atypical: a big white collar employer, Residential Capital LLC. ResCap, as it's known, is a mortgage company located on a nicely landscaped, 17-acre campus. Its 950 employees in Iowa get wages averaging about $35,000 a year — pretty good...

Amid the tumult over looming tax hikes and spending cuts , a massive change to the corporate tax code is quietly gathering steam. U.S. multinationals have spent years pushing for a change to the tax code that would eliminate taxes on business profits overseas, just as these firms are banking their futures on growth abroad. Now, with the debate over the country's fiscal future in the spotlight, executives, lobbyists and some on Capitol Hill are...

President Obama yesterday announced a major offensive against businesses and wealthy individuals who avoid U.S. taxes by parking cash overseas, a battle he said would be fought with new tax laws, new reporting requirements and an army of 800 new IRS agents. During an event at the White House, Obama said his proposal would raise $210 billion over the next decade and make good on his campaign pledge to eliminate tax advantages for companies that ship jobs abroad. "I want to see our companies remain the most...

A New York hedge fund manager allegedly swindles $12 million from a prominent Baltimore family. An Indiana couple is accused of bilking hundreds of customers by charging for free trials of cosmetic products. A financial manager in Texas promises 23-percent returns but absconds with $33.5 million of his investors' money in a classic Ponzi scheme. All three cases have one thing in common: money that ended up in offshore accounts and trusts set up in tax havens around the world. The existence of the trusts surfaced during a joint...

Treasury secretary nominee Jack Lew on Wednesday defended his work at Citigroup and argued that his long career in government and business qualified him to become the President Obama's top economic adviser. After more than three hours of questions at his confirmation hearing, Lew appeared unruffled by grilling from Republicans about a wide range of topics, from his investment in a fund registered in the Cayman...

President Obama won reelection in part by beating up on his opponent for receiving big corporate payouts in exchange for dubious work and for socking away money in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands. So it's a bit, well, rich that Obama chose as his new Treasury secretary a man who received a big corporate payout for dubious work and who socked away money in the Cayman Islands. This awkward fact pattern forced a role reversal Wednesday on Capitol Hill, as Obama's nominee, Jack Lew, came before the...

At his confirmation hearing in 2001 to become George W. Bush's first Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill told the Senate's tax-writing committee: "If you want to give me inducements for something I am going to do anyway, I will take it. But good business people do not do things for inducements. " The outspoken former chief executive of two Fortune 500 companies was telling lawmakers something they rarely hear from the business community: Taxes don't change behavior. Just...

Amid the tumult over looming tax hikes and spending cuts , a massive change to the corporate tax code is quietly gathering steam. U.S. multinationals have spent years pushing for a change to the tax code that would eliminate taxes on business profits overseas, just as these firms are banking their futures on growth abroad. Now, with the debate over the country's fiscal future in the spotlight, executives, lobbyists and some on Capitol Hill are latching onto...

Waterloo, Iowa's sixth-largest city, is a blue-collar community located off Interstate 380, the "Avenue of the Saints" that runs from St. Louis to St. Paul, Minn. Go a few blocks from the Crossroads Mall in west Waterloo, you find something atypical: a big white collar employer, Residential Capital LLC. ResCap, as it's known, is a mortgage company located on a nicely landscaped, 17-acre campus. Its 950 employees in Iowa get wages averaging about $35,000 a year —...

Just before Tax Day, here is a depressing nu mber: $356 billion. That is the Congressional Budget Office's new calculation of how much the financial bailout will cost taxpayers. And it's nearly twice the previous estimate. Who won't be helping foot the TARP bill? Tax evaders -- but they might not get away with it for long. At the recent G20 summit in London, amid pledges to reject protectionism and rebuild trust in the global financial system, the winner of the sound-bite competition was the discussion of tax havens, those key...

Has God forsaken the Republican Party? Well, sit in judgment of what's happened in the past few days: ●A report comes out that a couple dozen House Republicans engaged in an alcohol-induced frolic , in one case nude, in the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is believed to have walked on water, calmed the storm and, nearby, turned water into wine and performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes. ●Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri's Republican nominee for Senate, suggests there is such a thing as "legitimate rape" and...

Has God forsaken the Republican Party? Well, sit in judgment of what's happened in the past few days: ●A report comes out that a couple dozen House Republicans engaged in an alcohol-induced frolic , in one case nude, in the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is believed to have walked on water, calmed the storm and, nearby, turned water into wine and performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes. ●Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri's Republican nominee for Senate, suggests there is such a thing as "legitimate rape" and purports...

Mitt Romney is an impressive man, but until now, we didn't know just how impressive. According to his senior adviser, Ed Gillespie, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is a time traveler. Gillespie made this surprise disclosure to CNN's Candy Crowley on Sunday as he attempted to explain why the candidate claimed to have stepped down as chief executive of Bain Capital in 1999 but the company's filings show him in that position through 2002. "He took a leave of absence," Gillespie said, "and, in fact, Candy, he ended...