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London, Delaware Top List Of Secretive Tax Havens

Both London city and the US state of Delaware scored highly in an objective ranking of secrecy jurisdictions, confirming what many had expected - the war against tax havens is a farce.

The US State of Delaware Is Home To Many A Tax Free Company

Despite calls for greater “opacity” from smaller countries, it was confirmed that the US state of Delaware is the most secretive tax haven in the world, an extremely embarassing blow for Obama´s anti-tax haven legislation.

US authorities already knew about this of course..so why haven´t they got round to doing something about it? Because..if they did that foreign investors would leave the US in droves.

The Financial Secrecy Index (FSI), is a report compiled by the Tax Justice Network, which attempts to objectively rank worldwide jurisdictions for the amount of financial transparency they offer.Two measures, an “opacity” score and a weighting are combined to give the overall Financial Secrecy Index score.

Interestingly, the Tax Justice Network calls for many of thes same things as high-tax countries, namely that tax havens should open up their Secrecy Legislation. But while the US government and OECD only want the “little tax haven countries” to give up their secrecy laws, the TJN wants this to happen wordlwide, irregardless of nationality. Hence, “tax justice”.

How did other countries fare?

Switzerland (3) the Cayman Islands (4) both achieved a respectable rank, while London was revealed at no.5. Surprisingly, traditional “tax havens” like Panama and Nevis were much further down the list, ranking 19th and joint 46th respectively.

Click for full Financial Secrecy Index.