When is a tax haven not a tax haven? That rather depends on whether the location is described by the Secretariat of the OECD or a thinking person! To most people a tax haven is readily discernible but the OECD Secretariat in its recent report on "Towards Global Tax Co-Operation " 1 has decided to play fast and loose with analytical logic.
The stated objective of the report was to demonstrate taxation practices that cause undesired shifts of the world’s tax burden to less mobile economic bases such as labour, property and consumption. In other words, the report was to address a perceived abuse produced in the world’s economy by "mobile" financial service activities being seduced to inappropriate locations. I choose the word "inappropriate" with great care because we should always return to the purported definition of the purpose of the report and that was to look on a world wide basis to ensure the so called fair distribution of the tax burden to all sectors of the economy.
