Tax haven
A tax haven is a country or territory where certain taxes are levied at a low rate or not at all.
Individuals and/or corporate entities can find it attractive to move themselves to areas with reduced or nil taxation levels. This creates a situation of tax competition among governments. Different jurisdictions tend to be havens for different types of taxes, and for different categories of people and/or companies.
There are several definitions of tax havens. The Economist has tentatively adopted the description by Geoffrey Colin Powell (former economic adviser to Jersey): "What ... identifies an area as a tax haven is the existence of a composite tax structure established deliberately to take advantage of, and exploit, a worldwide demand for opportunities to engage in tax avoidance." The Economist points out that this definition would still exclude a number of jurisdictions traditionally thought of as tax havens. Similarly, others have suggested that any country which modifies its tax laws to attract foreign capital could be considered a tax haven. According to other definitions, the central feature of a haven is that its laws and other measures can be used to evade or avoid the tax laws or regulations of other jurisdictions.
In its December 2008 report on the use of tax havens by American corporations, the U.S. Government Accountability Office was unable to find a satisfactory definition of a tax haven but regarded the following characteristics as indicative of a tax haven: 1. nil or nominal taxes; 2. lack of effective exchange of tax information with foreign tax authorities; 3. lack of transparency[citation needed] in the operation of legislative, legal or administrative provisions; 4. no requirement for a substantive local presence; and 5. self-promotion as an offshore financial center.
The use of differing tax laws between two or more countries to try to mitigate tax liability is probably as old as taxation itself. In Ancient