LaRouche Welcomes `Collision' Between Obama and Brown Over the Offshore Empire Tax Havens
March 4, 2009 (LPAC)--The Obama White House is pushing strongly, for passage of Senate bill S-506 to force the revelation and taxation of "offshore" tax-evading income--what has been as much as $13 trillion untaxed wealth in United Kingdom offshore centers, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. In 2006, then-Senator Barack Obama had co-sponsored with Sen. Carl Levin, the anti-tax evasion legislation which President Barack Obama is now calling for. Economist Lyndon LaRouche today declared the "total, enthusiastic support" of his LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC) for the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act. It could stop the bankers and hedge fund operators who brought the financial system down, from enjoying their looting fortunes untaxed and costing the U.S. Federal government $100 billion a year in tax revenue.
More importantly, the White House push to open the "secret banking jurisdictions" of the British offshore empire puts Obama "on a real collision course with [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown," as the London Guardian reported today. In contrast also to Germany and France, the British oppose opening up the offshore tax-avoiding banking centers, and oppose writing off derivatives and other bad debts booked there. The Guardian says the Levin Senate legislation "is a severe blow to Jersey, the Cayman Islands, and Switzerland, where $13 trillion in untaxed private wealth has gone." These and many other island havens are under UK (or Dutch) protection. Brown is under intense City and UK-offshore pressure to stop this "blow." And though the Guardian does not mention it, Gordon Brown was formerly called "the tax evaders' Chancellor" for his protection of the offshore UK money centers from regulation or disclosure, and his opposition to regulation in the City of London banks themselves.
The U.S. President who chucked Winston Churchill's bust out of the Oval Office, has already had a chilly encounter with Gordon Brown on March 3, nixing a press conference at which Brown wanted to push his latest global bank bailout schemes. If S-506 becomes law, it will force Brown into open protection of Wall Street and City of London tax looters, along with such British agents as George Soros.
Senator Levin said yesterday, "President Obama's support for the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, as announced by Treasury Secretary Geithner [on March 3], is very welcome news and greatly improves the chances of an offshore tax bill becoming law this year."
LaRouche said, "This is excellent. Go all out for it."
He is still alive? Isn't he like 102 by now?
March 5, 2009 1:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
rec'd
I can see where this conflict comes from. The united states, along with a grand total of 2 other countries, taxes its citizens on a world-wide basis. It's only tax treaties and the establishment of separate corporate subsidiaries (loopholes) that allow offshore business to stay untaxed in the US.
In contrast, 99% of the rest of the world's countries only tax activity going on within their borders.
I'm not saying Obama's wrong for wanting to bring this income back home (indeed I hope they do--there ought to be some piper to pay for taking advantage of having an american "base" of operations), but the world is globalizing, and the tax laws are just a little piece of that. Along with free trade and free movement of capital, you get a "race to the bottom" with tax laws.
one of the biggest complaints for MNCs is the double tax: if the US is taxing their offshore subsidiaries, you bet the sub's also being taxed by the country where it is located. We can hardly say that foreign country doesn't deserve to tax a business within its borders. But it may not be fair to layer the entire amount of both the foreign tax and the US tax on the country. Still, there's got to be a better way than just eliminating the US tax completely.
For branches, ie, non-legally-separate entities doing business overseas, a US business can claim a foreign tax credit (like those state tax deductions you get on your fed income taxes, except it's a credit). Maybe there's a way to extend that to foreign subsidiaries as well.
March 5, 2009 8:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Guardian Ridicules Gordon Brown: Brits Run Bank Secrecy
March 8, 2009 (LPAC)--Even the London Guardian ridicules the hypocrisy of British PM Gordon Brown's address to the U.S. Congress last week: If Brown opposes banking secrecy, as he told the gullible U.S. Congress, then "We shouldn't forget that 11 of the world's 37 'suspect jurisdictions,' as defined by the proposed U.S. anti-tax-dodge law, are inextricably linked to Britain."
"If this Gordon Brown is so opposed on principle to tax evasion, those congressmen might have asked themselves, why did he not as chancellor [of the Exchequer] demand transparency from Jersey, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the rest? With Brown in the Treasury, Britain regularly lobbied the UN and EU against moves to bring financial services under great multilateral supervision."
There is an estimated $8.2 trillion British pounds of private wealth currently sitting in "tax havens," that would produce 180 billion pounds in lost tax--more than double last year's global aid budget. But, says the Guardian, cracking down on tax havens would serve "an even more profound purpose--to recast the debate on offshore taxation in moral terms. A better expression for tax havens is 'secrecy jurisdictions,' where along with the profits of legal activity, the spoils of fraud, terrorism, drug trafficking and plunder ... are hidden."
LPACTV: LaRouche Declares War on the British Empire
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/9443
March 9, 2009 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink