Eliminate Tax Loopholes and Off-Shore Safe Havens

For many decades multinational corporations and wealthy individuals have been using international taxation systems to their advantage to lower their taxes to near 0%. Subsidiaries in the Netherlands, Ireland, and Luxembourg are common for multinational corporations, while small island countries like the Bahamas or Cayman Islands hold billions in untaxed income.

While the lower taxes and special regulations attract corporations and individuals for the short-term benefit of the few low-tax countries, the long-term damage to societies around the world losing out on trillion in taxes is immeasurable.

Having lower tax rates to attract corporations makes sense when such corporations create jobs and wealth in the country, but in today’s world the location of creating and selling a product are separate. Corporation are outsourcing jobs to the cheapest country possible while (not) getting taxed on the other side of the world for the sale of their product.

Countries who have an over-competitive tax system or even consciously function as an intermediary to avoid taxation (Dutch Sandwich) need to be sanctioned and held accountable by the damage they are causing.

Companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft have to contribute in society just as everyone else and should not stand above the law and pay less taxes than any other smaller corporation.

In order to eliminate all tax loopholes and safe havens, the EU has to pursue an overreaching taxation system that every country abides to. If a corporation does not want to pay taxes in a country it makes billions in profit, it should be fined in the sum of its outstanding taxes or banned from doing any business. The EU has huge leveraging power and can decide on banning the corporation EU-wide, which none corporation would favor over lower taxes.