SOVEREIGN RIGHTS OF TAX HAVENS AND THE CHARGE OF HARMFUL TAX COMPETITION
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2011
Authors
SANNI, A.O
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
South African Institute of Tax Practitioners
Abstract
The ongoing financial meltdown resulting mainly from the failure of national financial institutions in the United States and United Kingdom has brought into focus the need to overhaul domestic financial supervisory system and create transnational or global regulatory institutions. For reasons that are far-fetched, part of the blame had been put at the doorsteps of tax havens and offshore financial centres (OFC). There are extreme arguments by protagonists of tax haven and anti-tax haven pressure groups that need to be moderated. For example, some see tax havens as friendly or a soft tax system, fiscal refuge or fiscal paradise from the confiscatory hands of the Leviathans. Others see them as financial cesspools teeming with dirty money, crooks and tax evaders.
We interrogate the tension between the right of a nation to design its tax policies based on its own priority and the claim by developing countries that such policies are harmful to their own economies. The paper briefly examines the concept of fiscal sovereignty, the historical development of tax havens and the multilateral pressure being exerted on the tax havens to share information on taxable activities within their jurisdictions. I am of the view that it is unfair for the developed countries (who helped create the tax havens in the first instance) to encroach on their fiscal sovereignty in a bid to protect their own tax base especially when they have not violated any rule of international law.
Description
Keywords
Public Comments On The Tax Administration Bill , Tax Talk , Tax Havens
Citation
Sanni, A.O (2011) "SOVEREIGN RIGHTS OF TAX HAVENS AND THE CHARGE OF HARMFUL TAX COMPETITION" 31,13. South African Institute of Tax Practitioners.