National groups and political leaders, including Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi, are calling for a slowdown of Republican efforts to push through their tax bill to address these abuses.
Oxfam America and the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition have called on Congress to hold hearings on the findings and a debate over how to best remedy them. Tax Justice Network international has called on the United Nations to convene a global summit to address tax haven abuse.
The hidden wealth system is used by both wealthy individuals and transnational corporations. Research by Gabriel Zucman and others estimates that households in the top 0.01 percent, those with wealth over $45 million, evade 25 to 30 percent of personal income and wealth taxes. This amounts to more than 10 percent of global GDP is hidden in offshore tax shelters.
Zucman estimates that tax haven use has grown 25 percent in the past five years and U.S. citizens have at least $1.2 trillion stashed offshore. In all, at least $200 billion a year in tax revenue is lost from wealthy individuals and $130 billion from corporate tax avoidance.
Hundreds of large transnational corporations use the offshore system to reduce or skirt their tax obligations. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Fortune 500 corporations hold an estimated $2.6 trillion offshore. Verizon, General Electric, Boeing, Nike, and Amazon are just a few of the offenders.
One common dodge is to shift paper profits to subsidiaries in low-tax or no-tax countries like the Cayman Islands or Ireland. Companies utilizing these schemes maintain the fiction that their profits are piling up “off shore” while their losses accrue in the United States, reducing or eliminating their obligation to Uncle Sam.
Systematically confronting offshore tax havens will require legislative action, international diplomacy, and sanctions and penalties aimed at both banks and tax-haven jurisdictions. Uniform disclosure and transparency, both of banks and capital flows, should be a fundamental component of all new treaties.
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November 8th, 2017 
Awake Goy 
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