The latest TIME documents that “U.S. authorities are ramping up the war on offshore tax havens.”
Until recently, governments around the world couldn’t do much about tax dodging by wealthy citizens who squirreled their riches abroad. But with public coffers running dry in a bleak economy, U.S. and European governments have become more aggressive about chasing down tax evaders. The U.S. is using new legal tactics to lead the charge, partly because the world’s largest economy loses the most–an estimated $100 billion–to tax havens each year. But Washington’s efforts are falling short, even as it escalates its campaign to combat the problem. The effort kicked off when a high-profile out-of-court settlement in 2009 forced Swiss bank UBS to report more than 4,000 of its U.S. clients to the IRS.
As you ponder the merits of this federal campaign, it might help to consider an alternative perspective on tax “havens” from the Cato Institute‘s Dan Mitchell.
