May 04, 2013

The best way to compete with tax havens and fiscal paradises abroad is to create tax heavens and paradises at home.

Sir, Vanessa Houlder writes that with respect to tax avoidance “Governments are complicit in the problems they are condemning. It is their tax systems that has created incentives for businesses to behave that way”, “Talk is cheap in the clampdown on tax avoidance” May 4. And she is more correct than what she probably knows. I have always held that the best way to compete with tax havens and fiscal paradises abroad is to create tax heavens and paradises at home.

Also considering the enormous growth in fiscal income and the relative poor delivery of services, like the costs of any government financed infrastructure going to the roof, we might be reaching the point in which governments become too-big-to-govern, and in which case some escape valves could prove to be blessings in disguise. For instance, once the air cleans in Greece, private Greek capital safeguarded abroad might prove indispensable for the survival of Greece.