Answers lesson 3

1) = Jurisdictions characterized by:

- Lack of transparency
- Lack of effective exchange of information.
- Tax rates?
So a low tax jurisdiction is not necessarily a tax haven.
2) Panama papers: a bunch of papers that came above water and illustrate offshoring, how to
avoid taxes, money laundering, financing of terrorism etc. a lot of CEO’s of big companies,
industrialists and even politicians from all around the globe were involved in this scandal.
3) Going offshore: based or operating abroad in places where the tax system is more
advantageous than that of the home country: offshore banking; offshore fund (examples).
4) = Jurisdictions characterized by:
- Lack of transparency
- Lack of effective exchange of information.
- Tax rates?
So a low tax jurisdiction is not necessarily a tax haven.
5) They want to improve transparency, improve exchange of information and a co-operative
approach. They don’t want harmonization or setting minimum tax rates, impinging on
national fiscal sovereignty and an unfair competitive advantage for OECD financial centres.
6) Governments sometimes don’t have any resources or things to rely on for their income. So in
order to attract outsiders to invest in their countries, they lower their taxes. Here they use
their national fiscal sovereignty.
Sovereignty = the state just mind his own business, it can decide its own tax rates. The
problem is:
 Unfair competitive advantage with other countries.
 It can create a gateway for dirty business.
Counties never live alone, they are always in a relationship with each other.
7) No, transparency is unlikely a significant concern for bona fide business. Transparency is not
the solution.
8) Shelf company: A shelf company is ideally a business entity that has been formed and
properly maintained, but which has never conducted any business. It can be useful because
of its age.
shell company: A shell company is an entity that conducts no business and is used instead to
hold assets. Shell companies are used in various business activities, many of which are
legitimate. For example, say a group of investors want to pool their capital to start a new
company, but they live in an area of the world with an unsound banking system. It would
make sense to form a shell corporation in an offshore country with a stable financial system
and keep the capital in the shell corporation until it was needed.
9) Nominee-shareholders= they are the ‘shareholders’ of the company, but in reality they are
just normal people in these tax havens/ islands. = people who hold the shares, keep them in
care.
 this means that there is transparency (you can see who is the shareholder etc) but you
can’t still trace the real shareholders or the real creator of the company
10) The PT system: a system of Perpetual travellers. You can register your company in one
country and you can live somewhere else and have a bank account in another country… it’s
so confusing for all those countries that they don’t get into the mess. Terrorist or the culprits
 of the terror attacks in Europe know this and they fund their attacks via this method. You
compartmental your life.
11) Voorbeeld van Brecht.