“Politicians Have to Toughen up on Tax Havens”
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ZEW expert Professor Andreas Peichl on the Anti-Corruption Summit London 2016
“Politicians Have to Toughen up on Tax Havens”
On today's summit in London, the world's governments are conferring on how to effectively fight global corruption. According to Professor Andreas Peichl, head of the research group “International Distribution and Redistribution” at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, politicians lack consistency in a crucial matter – namely in tackling tax havens within the Commonwealth.
“As the revealed Panama Papers have shown, a great number of tax havens is under the aegis of the United Kingdom. Locations such as the Cayman Islands, the Virgin Islands or the Channel Islands offer perfect conditions to feather one's own figurative nest: highlevel contract, financial and legal certainty, combined with extremely low corporate or income taxes and no information exchange. All this is tolerated by the British Crown, which thereby facilitates tax abuse in these tax havens. Policy might toughen up on that issue, but does not seem to do so. A transparency register, as proposed by the European Union, might actually provide a remedy – on condition that the authorities are granted access to the related data. Tax prosecution would receive essential support if specialists in charge evaluate that data. In the end, this would benefit the public budget and therefore the tax payer.”
For more information please contact:
Prof. Dr. Andreas Peichl, Phone +49/621/1235-389, E-mail peichl@zew.de
The Mannheim Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW)
ZEW works in the field of frontier empirical research in economics. The institute especially distinguished itself by working on internationally comparative studies in the context of Europe and by creating important scientific data bases, e.g. the Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP) and the ZEW Start-up Panel.
ZEW’s key objectives are to conduct excellent economic research, provide science-based economic policy advice and transfer knowledge. ZEW was founded in 1991. ZEW currently has a staff of approximately 190 employees, two thirds of whom are researchers.
Research at ZEW:
Labour Markets, Human Resources and Social Policy; Industrial Economics and International Management; Information and Communication Technologies; International Finance and Financial Management; Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management; Corporate Taxation and Public Finance; International Distribution and Redistribution; Competition and Regulation