Combatting Offshore Tax Evasion After Brexit EmilDuvessa SondajBandeen, Han Juliette Bowen, Mark O’Brien, Will Melling and Zeki Dolen Emil Sondaj Hansen,
I.III THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
A glance at the Tax Justice Network’s 2019 Corporate Tax Haven Index reveals a substantial association between Britain and the offshore financial centres that have become notorious sites of tax evasion. Of the top ten tax havens listed, including the top three, four are British Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies.40 The same organisation’s Financial Secrecy Index has the Cayman Islands, an Overseas Territory, as the most financially secret jurisdiction.41 This connection is sufficiently strong that activists and academics have taken to labelling the network of offshore financial centres extending outwards from the City of London a ‘second British Empire’.42 Taken together, in 2009 they accounted for 31% of all outstanding international loans, adding former colonies that are now fully independent takes the total to 40%.43 This framing is particularly apt in light of the history of the first major expansion of tax havens in the late 1950s, and the crucial role played by the British state in facilitating it. Although Britain later abandoned the policy of promoting the development of tax havens in its colonies and subsequently took part in international efforts to curb tax evasion, its approach has not proven unproblematic. In order to understand possible contemporary British strategies for combatting tax evasion, the historical link between Britain and its expansion offshore must first be examined.
i.
40
The British Empire and Regulatory Evenness
‘Corporate Tax Haven Index - 2019 Results’ <https://corporatetaxhavenindex.org/en/introduction/cthi-2019-results> accessed 28
August 2020. 41
‘Financial Secrecy Index - 2020 Results’ <https://fsi.taxjustice.net/en/introduction/fsi-results> accessed 28 August 2020.
42
R Palan, ‘The Second British Empire: The British Empire and the Re-Emergence of Global Finance’ in S Halperin and R Palan (eds),
Legacies
of
Empire
Imperial
Roots
of
the
Contemporary
Global
Order
(Cambridge
University
Press,
2015)
<https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/12698/> accessed 28 August 2020. 43
Ronen Palan, ‘International Financial Centers: The British-Empire, City-States and Commercially Oriented Politics’ (2010) 11 Theoretical
Inquiries in Law 149.
The Wilberforce Society Cambridge, UK
www.thewilberforcesociety.co.uk
22
February 2021
