A general view shows buildings in Panama City, Panama October 3, 2021. REUTERS/ARIS MARTINEZ
For all the remarkable revelations about the shadow global financial system for wealthy individuals and businesses since the ICIJ’s first revelations in 2013, though, it’s striking how little has changed. Far from taking a larger share, most developed nations have coped with the leakage of taxable profits over the past decade by cutting their own corporate tax rates — a tacit admission that enforcement has failed. Mandatory disclosure rules introduced in 2014 to prevent European banks’ use of tax havens seem to have made no real difference, according to a report last month by the EU Tax Observatory.
Any attempts to restrain them are like a game of Whac-A-Mole. That applies even to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s attempts to reset the world’s tax rules via an accord between 130 jurisdictions due to be finalised this month.