Tax havens

Tax havens

避税天堂

Trouble island

是非之岛

Public anger and shareholder unease threaten tax havens’ tranquillity

公众愤怒，股东不安：安定的避税天堂遭威胁

Oct 15th 2011 | NEW YORK AND PARIS | from the print edition

UNDER intense international pressure to lift banking secrecy, the first and biggest of the world’s

“tax havens”—places that charge low or no taxes to foreigners—is ceding some ground. In a deal

signed on October 6th, Switzerland agreed to tax money held in its banks by British residents (it

had already done a similar deal with Germany). These customers face a levy of up to 34% as well

as, from 2013, a withholding tax.

迫于国际对银行保密工作提升的强烈高压，全球历史最悠久，规模最大的避税天堂（只收取较低费用或完全免税的地方），开始让步。10月6日，瑞士签署了一项协议，同意对英国籍居民的瑞士银行存款收税（瑞士同德国也签署了相同的协议）。在瑞士银行有存款的英国公民从2013年开始，需要缴纳34%的代扣税。

That could bring the British treasury around £5 billion ($7.8 billion). But Nicholas Shaxson,

author of “Treasure Islands”, a book on offshore finance (and a former contributor to this paper),

calls it a “Swiss tax swizz”: the country will in effect pay a fat fee to avoid revealing clients’

names. That undermines efforts at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,

a Paris-based club of mostly rich countries, to set international standards on tax evasion.

上述所征税费将给英国国库带来大约50亿英镑（78亿美元）的收入。尼古拉斯.夏克森(Nicholas Shaxson本报早先贡献者)曾著有关于离岸金融的Treasure Islands（试译：财富岛）一书，称该税为“瑞士诈欺税”：瑞士将会支付一大笔来避免客户信息外泄。这破坏了经济合作与发展组织（该组织总部在巴黎，成员大部分为发达富有国家）对设立国际避税标准而做出的种种努力。

The fact that Switzerland did a deal at all reflects a changing climate for offshore finance, which

has flourished for 50 years. Its defenders still have strong arguments to muster. The most

controversial is the Swiss stance, which sees tax as a morally neutral battle of wits against the

fiscal authorities: quite different from money-laundering or fraud. From that viewpoint, banking

secrecy is a human right and states that try to overturn it are overreaching their powers.

瑞士做此交易的事实确实反映出曾经繁荣昌盛了50年的离岸金融，形势正发生变化。其拥护者仍然发出强烈抗议。瑞士最具争议的立场是视智者与财政管理机构间的斗智为道义上的斗争，并对此采取中立。这和洗钱或诈欺是截然不同的。由此观点看出，银行隐私保密工作是人的权利，国家想对此作出干涉，实在是管得过宽了。

Other less idealistic arguments abound. Some say that companies’ legal duty to shareholders

necessitates using offshore finance to reduce and simplify taxes; it is all the more important when

regimes and rates differ wildly in the onshore world. Offshore jurisdictions also provide the tax

and regulatory competition that keeps grasping governments and officials in check. Even if a

company’s profits are higher as a result of using a tax haven, that money will flow out and

eventually be taxed, for example as dividends when it reaches shareholders. Offshore financial

centres compete by being well run and regulated—with tougher standards (for example on

knowing your customer) than some supposedly respectable countries. Rather than cracking down

offshore, the need is for simpler, clearer tax regimes onshore, where companies do their real

business.

另外还盛行着一些没那么唯心的观点。一些人认为使用离岸金融减少和简化税费是必要的，这是企业对股东应尽的法律义务。与各国境内截然不同的管理体制和费率就变得很重要。离岸管辖区也提供了税收和规范竞争条例制约贪婪的政府和官员。就算一个公司的利润由于避税而提高了，这部分的资金仍会流出并最终被征税，例如股东得到分红时，是要上税的。由于标准更严格，相较于一些本来值得尊敬的国家，离岸金融中心以良好运作和管理取胜（比如在客户认知的方面）。与其搞垮离岸交易，企业更需要的是一个相较于境内税费更简化透明的地方，这里才是真正做生意的地方。

Cold arguments for sunny places

冷言相加阳光之地

As public faith in the universal benefits of markets and globalisation wobbles, and public coffers

empty, such arguments pall. Small firms are angry that clever offshore schemes favour their bigger

competitors. Citizens and policymakers are readier to hear a broader case: that offshore

finance skews the global distribution of wealth, away from poor countries and those that levy

taxes to pay for public goods (including the ones that benefit companies).

由于公众都认为全球利益与市场行情﹑全球化波动和公库亏空相关,于是这些争论开始走偏。小公司很愤怒，因为一些灵活的离岸计划都有助于和他们竞争的大公司。对于公民和决策人，更入耳的是夸大了的情况：境外金融扭曲了全球的财富分布,剥夺了穷国和那些为公益事业征税的国家财富(包括那些从公司受益的国家).

Global Financial Integrity, a campaigning group, says poor countries “lose” more than $1 trillion a

year to tax havens, around ten times the aid they receive. Two-thirds of this is tax evasion and

avoidance, the group says, the rest transfers by criminals and the corrupt. Another outfit of fiscal

inquisitors, the Tax Justice Network (TJN), cites research by the Bank for International

Settlements, the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey to calculate that global offshore deposits

amount to at least $9 trillion, some $2 trillion more than the total held at home by American banks.

ActionAid, a charity, published research this week showing that the companies in the FTSE 100

index had 8,492 offshore subsidiaries.

据全球金融诚信活动组织称，因为避税天堂的缘故，穷国每年失去一万亿多美元,这大约是他们所得援助金的十倍.该组织称,这一万亿多美元的税收，三分之二被逃掉或免除,其余被犯罪分子和贪官所交易。另一财政检察管机构,税收正义网络组织"(TJN)援引国际清算银行,波