Treasure Islands - Nicholas Shaxson [145]
39.Nicolas Sarkozy, “Just Ahead of the G20 Pittsburgh Summit,” from “Paradis fiscaux: bilan du G20 en 12 questions,” CCFD-Terre Solidaire, April 2010.
40.For a list of uncooperative tax havens, see OECD Center for Tax Policy and Administration, http://www.oecd.org/document/57/0,3343,en_2649_33745_30578809_1_1_1_1,00.html, accessed 2010. At the time of writing, countries could get off the blacklist by signing 12 “tax information exchange agreements” (TIEAs) with other jurisdictions—relying on extremely weak standards of information exchange. Many havens got off the blacklist by signing TIEAs with such global heavyweights as Greenland and San Marino.
41.E. G. Richard Salsman, “Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil Confuses Tax Avoidance versus Tax Evasion,” Capitalism Magazine, September 13, 2002.
42.That is a gross figure. See “The Dutch Trust Industry: Facts and Figures,” International Management Services Association (VIMS) & Dutch Fiduciary Organization (DFA), April 2008.
43.Author’s interview with Morgenthau, New York, May 4, 2009.
44.Oliver Arlow, “Kim Jong-il Keeps 4bn Emergency Fund in European Banks,” The Telegraph, March 14 2010.
45.Dev Kar and Devon Cartwright Smith, Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries, 2002–2006 (Washington, D.C.: Global Financial Integrity, 2008). The authors define illicit money as that which is “illegally earned, transferred or utilized.” Economists from the Oxford Centre for Business Taxation have called these figures “drastically overstated.” Dev Kar, the GFI economist (formerly an IMF Senior Economist), has in turn effectively countered their arguments, noting the blind spot in traditional estimates. Traditional models will estimate the magnitude of illicit outflows from a country, then estimate the magnitude of illicit inflows, and then subtract one from the other to achieve a net result. Kar explains, however, that the estimates should not be subtracted, but added. For further details, see “Time to Bury the Oxford Report,” Tax Justice Network blog, July 16, 2009, plus associated links; and Dev Kar, “The Alpha, but Whither the Omega, of the Greek Crisis?” Task Force on Financial Integrity & Economic Development blog, May 11, 2010.
46.Raymond Baker, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free Market System (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2005). That book’s headline $1–1.6 trillion figure was subsequently endorsed in “Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative: Challenges, Opportunities, and Action Plan,” World Bank / UN Office on Drugs and Crime, June 2007.
47.A picture of the book may be found at “Illicit Flows: We Finally Reveal the Official Data,” Tax Justice Network blog, July 23, 2009.
48.Josh Rogin, “Clinton Presses Pakistan to Raise Taxes on Wealthy,” Foreign Policy, September 28, 2010.
49.Author’s interviews with Blum, and “A Conversation with Jack Blum,” The American Interest, November/December 2009.
50.Office of Management and Budget, “Budget of the U.S Government, Fiscal Year 2011, Historical Tables,” February 2010 (calculations by Citizens for Tax Justice [CTJ], emailed to author by Bob Mcintyre, CTJ director). Also see Ben Bagdikian, “The 50-Year Swindle,” The Progressive, April 31, 2002.
51.For instance, the share of total income going to the top 1 percent of earners rose from 8.9 percent in 1976 to 23.5 percent by 2007, while the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage declined by over 7 percent. See Robert H. Frank, “Income Inequality: Too Big to Ignore,” New York Times, October 16, 2010.
52.Chuck Collins, Alison Goldberg, and Sam Pizzigati, “Shifting Responsibility: How 50 Years of Tax Cuts Benefited the Wealthiest Americans,” report for Wealth for the Common Good, April 12, 2010.
53.KPMG press release, “Cyprus, Ireland and Switzerland Have Most Attractive Corporate Tax Regimes in Europe, Finds KPMG International Poll,” December 17, 2007, http://www.kpmg.co.uk/news/detail.cfm?pr=3008. Cyprus achieved a score of 90 percent.
54.A notable exception is “Business Unprepared as Fair