Paradise Papers

I have a question about offshore tax havens that no one has ever been able to answer. Can you name one legitimate reason to keep your money in a tax haven? 

The media keeps implying that there must be one. They keep pointing out (mostly to avoid the libel laws) that using a tax haven does not necessarily involve illegality or “wrongdoing”.

But what form of activity that isn’t wrong could possibly involve stashing your cash offshore? And why should we shy away from saying that starving the public purse of money is itself wrongdoing?

The Australian operations of mining giant Glencore have been implicated in the Paradise Papers revelations – the largest leak of documents in history.

The Paradise Papers show that Glencore was involved in currency swaps of up to $25 billion between the Bermuda-based and Australian-based arms of its company.

While theoretically "legal”, these types of swaps are being investigated by the Australian Tax Office under suspicion they may be used to avoid tax by shuttling interest payments from high-tax nations to low-tax jurisdictions.

Multinational corporations are using tax havens to avoid paying tax and the filthy rich are getting richer. Paradise Papers, Panama Papers, billionaire capers – what’s new? This stuff has been going on for yonks.

Britain's socialist Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the Paradise Papers, 13 million files leaked files that expose how the rich and powerful systematically evade tax, shows “one rule for the super-rich and another for the rest".