Offshore Financial Centre - Taxation

Taxation

Although most offshore financial centres originally rose to prominence by facilitating structures which helped to minimise exposure to tax, tax avoidance has played a decreasing role in the success of offshore financial centres in recent years. Most professional practitioners in offshore jurisdictions refer to themselves as "tax neutral" since, whatever tax burdens the proposed transaction or structure will have in its primary operating market, having the structure based in an offshore jurisdiction will not create any additional tax burdens.

A number of pressure groups suggest that offshore financial centres engage in "unfair tax competition" by having no, or very low tax burdens, and have argued that such jurisdictions should be forced to tax both economic activity and their own citizens at a higher level. Another criticism levelled against offshore financial centres is that whilst sophisticated jurisdictions usually have developed tax codes which prevent tax revenues leaking from the use of offshore jurisdictions, less developed nations, who can least afford to lose tax revenue, are unable to keep pace with the rapid development of the use of offshore financial structures.