Post by account_disabled on Feb 22, 2024 0:06:20 GMT -5
The words 'tax haven' do not sound unfamiliar to us, but they do sound distant. We believe that it is not something that has to do with us, ordinary citizens, but the truth is that the money invested in tax havens is money that belongs to us as a society . It is money that the State stops receiving and that could be invested in social policies, so battered and cut. We explain what a tax haven is, which are the most common and how the bad practices of large companies affect us. Download our free guide on solidarity technology here and discover websites and apps that help you... and help! A paradise without beaches or palm trees One of the first problems we encounter when talking about tax havens is that it is difficult to define them. One of their main characteristics is that they are territories in which companies hardly pay taxes or pay much lower taxes than they would pay in other countries where they market their products. Furthermore, they are very opaque and have laws that allow neither the registered entities nor their owners to identify themselves. Therefore, it is an information bombshell every time the names of investors in tax havens are revealed, as has recently happened with the Falciani list. For example, as a result of the publication of this list, Banco Santander had to pay more than 200 million euros to the Treasury.
How does that money end up there? Although it may seem like a lie in most cases legally. There are loopholes and legal loopholes in which governments are complicit. This is what we know as tax avoidance . If it were not legal, then we would talk about tax evasion . Just because many are legal practices does not mean they are responsible or ethical . There is a big difference between contributing fairly to the payment of taxes or trying by all means to pay the minimum taxes. It would be very difficult to explain in a simple way how large companies manage not to pay the taxes that correspond to them without breaking Albania Mobile Number List the law. In short, what they do is play with the legal loopholes of different countries and create business networks without real activity behind them, without workers, without productive facilities. They are shell companies, whose sole purpose is to pay few taxes. paraiso-fiscal The paradises that sound most familiar to us Some of the best-known tax havens are Delaware in the United States, Ireland, Holland, Luxembourg, Switzerland or the famous Cayman Islands, among many others. Some of its features among many are, for example: Delaware : has a total tax exemption for companies that do not carry out any activities in the United States. Holland : allows the existence of mailbox or post office box companies, which often do not even have employees. They simply register and have a headquarters.
They don't need anything else. Luxembourg : does not meet minimum standards of financial transparency, such as a register of beneficial owners of income, accounts and companies, or the existence of a mechanism for exchanging tax information with other countries. Cayman Islands : has commercial regulations with great flexibility and tax advantages. A small note, our country can also be considered a tax haven thanks to the ETVE or Foreign Securities Holding Companies. Designed to attract foreign capital, they allow foreign companies not to pay taxes on the profits they obtain in our country, to which is added the possibility of receiving aid and tax reductions in Spain for declared losses. In short, our country not only does not receive money for the profits of companies, but it ends up paying them when they declare alleged losses. Spain thus loses enormous amounts of resources that, however, do not generate real value, neither in Spain nor in third countries. Download the "Solidarity Technology" guide for free And we arrived at our country Tax fraud costs Spain around 59 billion euros every year . This amount exceeds the public budget that was dedicated to health in 2014. The Spanish companies of the IBEX 35, the companies that we can consider the largest and most relevant in our country, had 810 companies registered in territories considered tax havens in 2013.