Saturday, April 12, 2014

Gabriel Zucman on tax haven wealth

Paul Krugman points to this paper of Gebriel Zucman which estimates that about 8% of global financial wealth of households is in tax havens. "On the basis of plausible assumptions, accounting for unrecorded assets turns theeurozone, officially the world’s second largest net debtor, into a net creditor. It also reduces the U.S. net debt significantly. The results shed new light on global imbalances and challenge the widespread view that after a decade of poor-to-rich capital flows, external assets are now in poor countries and debts
in rich countries."
Nicholas Shaxson has been writing about tax havens. At the heart lies the City of London which explains the recent refusal by UK to go along with some of the sanctions against Russia. ICIJ has been regularly reporting and investigating about off shore transactions. See, for example, Who uses the offshore world.

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