Criticism
Tax havens have been criticized because they often result in the accumulation of idle cash which is expensive and inefficient for companies to repatriate. The tax shelter benefits result in a tax incidence disadvantaging the poor. Many tax havens are thought to have connections to "fraud, money laundering and terrorism." While investigations of illegal tax haven abuse have been ongoing, there have been few convictions. Lobbying pertaining to tax havens and associated transfer pricing has also been criticized.
Some politicians, such as magistrate Eva Joly, have begun to stand up against the use of tax havens by large companies. She describes the act of avoiding tax as a threat to democracy.
Accountants' opinions on the propriety of tax havens have been evolving, as have the opinions of their corporate users, governments, and politicians, although their use by Fortune 500 companies and others remains widespread. Reform proposals centering on the Big Four accountancy firms have been advanced. Some governments appear to be using computer spyware to scrutinize some corporations' finances.
Read more about this topic: Tax Haven
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men’s genius. By virtue of style, criticism can itself become literature. But usually this occurs only when the writer is acting as critic of his own work or as outrider to his own poetics, when the criticism of Coleridge is work in progress or that of T.S. Eliot propaganda.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)