[pavlov]

> ...the United Kingdom being the leader here.

Having lived in the UK, I'm convinced that the real reason for Brexit is to preserve these offshore tax havens from any meddling by EU regulations.

It's not an accident that Brexit suddenly became crucially important to the Conservative Party only when the EU developed a new interest in unified financial regulations after all the turmoil of 2008-2011.

[buboard]

The EU has plenty of tax heavens and satellite states. Some exist to serve the old rich (luxembourg, monaco) and others chose that path because, unless you are already a rich country, capital in EU is sparse, which further leads to brain drain. That's how countries like ireland and cyprus manage to recover faster than others.

I can't say if the latest regulations have really made an impact. They have surely made banking in EU a lot more bureaucratic and a lot more expensive for a small business.

[hogFeast]

The EU has an unbelievable number of tax havens. It is one of the last places in the developed world where you can genuinely clean dirty money with ease.

The last Commission President was literally the ringleader for tax theft: he was FM/PM of Luxembourg, and actively lobbied companies to domicile there, funnel revenue through Luxembourg (i.e. structuring for tax avoidance alone), and personally negotiated the 1% corporation tax deals.

...it always amazes me how little people actually understand about the EU.

Btw, the main issue for the Conservatives has been their inability to force the overseas territories to do things (what they actually think about tax havens is irrelevant now, events have moved on).

[pavlov]

Juncker made for a convenient political foil in many ways, but ultimately EU policy is made by national leaders in the European Council. The shady practices of Luxembourg and Cyprus were previously of no interest to the national leaders who had bigger fish to fry.

This has changed though, as certain European parties' voters have become irate about international tax evasion. For center-left PMs, stomping down on countries like Cyprus isn't going to lose them any votes and increasingly looks like a political win.

For Britain, the conundrum is that there's so much British money in the "nearshore" tax havens of Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Whereas Luxembourg mostly cut sweetheart deals for corporations and Cyprus mostly dealt with non-EU foreigners who don't get to vote anyway, cleaning up the British tax havens would threaten the hidden wealth of Conservative voters directly.

[hogFeast]

This isn't the case. All the main financial institutions in the Channel Islands and IoM are global so they KYC properly. More to the point though: the information-sharing is pretty much gold standard (bank accounts have been shared for a while but now beneficial ownership of companies is shared too).

The only way to avoid tax is to permanently move there. And, if you are familiar with either of those locations, you should know that the punishment fits the crime.

Also: it is far bigger than Luxembourg and Cyprus. Malta is basically a haven for financial fraud. Ireland is basically a tax haven now. And basically all of the East European nations are targets given the weak controls of their financial institutions (and Denmark as it turned out).

[sumedh]

Netherland has Curacao as its tax haven even when its part of the EU.