The opportunities Tax Havens offer (PDF)

Essay from the year 2020 in the subject Business economics - Accounting and Taxes, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: This essay reviews the academic literature on the potential positive effects of tax havens on non-haven industrialized countries. It starts with briefly defining tax havens in section 2. In section 3, the essay outlines the traditional "negative" view on tax havens and the prevalence of this view in empirical literature. Section 4 contrasts the preceding section and investigates the emerging "positive" view on tax havens. The conclusion answers the research questions and summarises the most important findings.

The public image of tax havens is "traditionally" negative. Scandals in the past (e.g. Liechtenstein Affaire, Panama Papers) elucidated the role a tax haven may play for a variety of high net worth individuals and/or political figures as a secrecy-jurisdiction to facilitate illegal activities, such as the evasion of taxes and/or safe-keeping/hiding of illicit earnings. Non-governmental organizations (such as the Tax Justice Network and the Global Finance Integrity) denounced the spread of tax havens and published listings of havens they deem potentially harmful to the global economy. Academic literature also highlights how tax havens exacerbate harmful tax competition and allow multinational corporations to avoid taxes in developed and developing countries alike through tax planning, thus being of "parasitic" nature for the global economy.