Comments on: Bailed Out Companies Also Tax Cheats?

By: T Brown

T Brown — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:22:20 +0000

“You’ve got a building in the Cayman Islands that supposedly houses 12,000 corporations. That’s either the biggest building or the biggest tax scam on record.”

This coming from a man who benefitted (putting it mildly) from the “work” of several non-profits assembled in a bit of a building in New Orleans.
Guess he would know about how such scams work.

By: Donman

Donman — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:57:03 +0000

You seem to throw the word evasion around rather readily. There are tons of legitimate and tax legal ways of using off shore subsidiaries that allow MORE funds from off shore earnings to be repatriated to the USA. In fact, taxpayers are not obliged to pay more tax than required by the law; a fact ignored by populists.

By: Bennet Cecil

Bennet Cecil — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:20:58 +0000

The best way to deal with these huge banks is to make them hold one dollar for every dollar they loan. This will stabilize them, make the FDIC irrelevant and mop up all of that funny money the Fed is creating. Now is the time to end fractional reserve banking. This will also force banks to bring those foreign dollars home to bolster deposits.

Finally, the largest ten banks should be split into smaller units. We do not need “too big to fail’ again. The largest ten banks should not have more than ten percent of all deposits. Remember we have thousands of banks and we should spread the money around.

The president and congress are trying to tell savers and investors that the US is not friendly to capital. They have not gotten the message yet, but they will in another year or two with higher taxes, poor corporate earnings and a plummeting dollar. Investors should consider selling into the rising US market and moving their savings to a location that rewards investment.

By: John S Grant

John S Grant — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:36:56 +0000

My Dear Neighbor Americans,
I think you should impeach your wonderful President Obama.
That’s some serious idiocy to listen to the wolf criers.
A man with no spine gets sucked into lousy deals. No due diligence.

This weakness in your leader is an invitation for our military to move against you.
It is mighty tempting to consider an invasion and take over of your country since your leadership is so easily hoodwinked. We hear that your current president is courting terrorists and inviting them to celebrate the Fourth of July in America. Do you supply the flags for burning or do they bring their own? This is a joke, right?

We would make you a sweet deal, you get to be our eleventh province and we give you financial stability and a parliamentary government.

Our banking system made a profit of $12Billion in 2008. We haven’t had a banking failure in almost 100 years. Becoming Canadian isn’t such a bad idea, and will be easy since you are accepting and not fighting high tax rates as they are imposed upon you.

I just hope we can get in and take you over before the Russians or Venezuelans do.

Wake UP, remember the Boston Tea Party, recover your backbone, and most of all, Act like Americans, suck it up, take charge!

By: Tony Travers

Tony Travers — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:39:47 +0000

The Cayman Islands are not a “tax haven”. According to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, tax havens are “foreign jurisdictions that offer financial secrecy laws in an effort to attract investment from outside their borders.” In addition, “Tax haven service providers and their clients know their actions are veiled from tax authorities…by lack of tax treaties or tax information exchange agreements.” None of the above applies to the Caymans, where the financial sector operates with full transparency – no secrecy, no veils.

The Cayman Islands have comprehensive agreements and treaties in place with both the U.S. and various EU jurisdictions that provide complete transparency and prevent tax evasion.

Offshore accounts are used by U.S. corporations to compete internationally – as you note in your blog post, the US has the second highest corporate tax rate – almost 40 percent – of the countries in the 30-nation Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Some economists note that tax rate is a crushing burden.

In the global financial marketplace, the Caymans provide a tax-neutral jurisdiction with a secure legal system that is used by global financial institutions to access international capital markets. In 2007, at the peak of the market, $2 to $3 trillion flowed into the U.S. through Cayman Island funds, providing a tremendous lift to the U.S. financial system.

The Cayman Islands received a largely favorable analysis in a July 2008 General Accounting Office report delivered to the Senate Finance Committee.

A quote from Senate Finance Committee testimony by Michael Brostek, Director, Strategic Issues, GAO:

“U.S. officials consistently report that cooperation by the Cayman Islands government in enforcement matters has been good. Further, both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Caribbean Financial Action Taskforce (CFATF) have cited the Cayman Islands for its efforts to comply with international standards, such as those related to anti-money-laundering and terrorist-financing activities.”