Hypocrisy & tax havens

In my piece around this time last year on the topic of tax havens, I poured scorn on the notion that the Swiss would give up their cherished banking secrecy just on the say-so of the US and UK.

Well, the UK has just revealed some details of its ‘transparency’ deal with Switzerland.

In return for disclosing the 20% or so of undeclared accounts that are identifiably British, the Swiss will not be required to reveal anything more. But any fule kno that most off-shore accounts are blind or discretionary trusts or some other vehicle that does not identify the owner. Off-shore banks specialise in these, and there are entire law firms that do nothing else.

And the levy only applies to accounts still held as at May 2013, so anybody idiotic enough to keep his off-shore account in his own name will have 18 months to shift his wedge to another ‘tax haven’. True the Swiss will be required to reveal the number of accounts shifted and the 10 most popular destinations, but not to disclose how much money was moved or by whom.

What’s more, the Swiss and Brits have agreed not to make public any information gathered, so Freedom of Information Act inquiries will get nowhere.

Not that any of this will bother the Swiss or make any difference. The really big amounts of funny money come from Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and China.

And did you know that although the US insists that the IMF investigates transparency into other countries’ offshore banking practices, it will not allow the IMF into its own banks, notwithstanding that America is the world’s largest tax shelter.