Economic security

The ‘Paradise Papers’ And The Long Twilight Struggle Against Offshore Secrecy

The offshore industry is a sprawling behemoth so secretive its very size can only be guessed and yet understood to be so large as to distort the global economy. A conservative estimate finds that at least $8.7 trillion, 11.5 percent of the world’s wealth, is hidden offshore, diverting billions from strapped national governments to the accounts of powerful corporations and individuals. They, in turn, use their power to further rig the global tax game at the expense of everyone else.

About 63 percent of U.S. multinationals’ foreign profits are held offshore, the main reason that effective U.S. corporate tax rates were already relatively low before the new tax law lowered them further. About 10 percent of Europe’s total wealth is now offshore, along with almost one-third of Africa’s and fully half of Russia’s.