Ha-Joon Chang Quotes

Shell companies can be owned by other shell companies; opaque offshore vehicles are carefully designed so that regulators can't identify who is using them; with the right accountants, they can be set up quickly and easily.

There is nothing inevitable about this secret offshore world. It is not a fact of nature: Our laws created tax havens, and our laws can also end them. We could forbid Goldman Sachs from owning opaque offshore vehicles. We could prevent companies such as Cadre from accepting anonymous investments.

We shouldn't be encouraging people to set up Cayman Island funds.

It isn't only rich countries that suffer from the effects of tax havens. Developing countries also lose billions of dollars in tax revenues due each year because wealthy individuals and some companies use tax havens to move assets and income offshore.

Much of the shadow banking sector, a major contributor to the economic crisis, was also only possible because of taxhaven secrecy.

We will also target tax evasion and off-shore tax havens... Everyone must pay their share.

Those who willfully conceal assets overseas undermine the playing field for all taxpayers.

Those who take their money abroad in an effort to avoid paying American taxes should lose their American citizenship.

We should not allow wealthy people, including corporate criminals, to hide their assets and avoid paying their bills.

Business is global. Countries need to react to that; taxes need to be paid where profit arises.

It's interesting that Swiss banks also hide their assets from the Swiss by using offshore bank structuring.

We know too little about global wealth dynamics, so we need international transmission of bank information.

People have to cooperate. Many people and traders here try to evade tax. They don’t want to pay tax so they smuggle goods and services into this country to make more money—as much as possible. The also manipulate the foreign currency market.

I think we have a tax policy that was designed before Microsoft even went public. I think we've got to change - we're at a huge disadvantage around the world.

As she was about to run for president in 2008, Clinton opposed a free-trade agreement with Panama - an agreement that, as Sanders pointed out, would make the kind of money-laundering we learned about from the Panama papers even more pervasive.

Collective European Union action could mean no hiding places for evaders, no safe haven for tax avoiders, and no treasure islands for money launderers.

Cyprus has a reputation as a laundromat for the Russians who are trying to avoid sanctions.

Plutocrats worldwide have readily understood the advantages of evading the burdens of the nation-state.

African countries lose the most from tax dodging. African governments must, therefore, do more to push for a full reform of the global tax system and demand action from countries, such as the U.K., whose financial centres sit at the heart of the global network of tax havens.

There's something fundamentally grubby about the rich paying people to seek out cracks in the system to hide their money.

Ultimately, developing countries and groups like Oxfam want to see a new intergovernmental body on cooperation in tax matters under the auspices of the United Nations.

If we can rid the world of financial centres that thrive on lack of transparency, non-cooperation, and weak regulation, an important step towards a fairer and cleaner world economy will have been achieved.

If we want a stronger, cleaner, and fairer world economy, we need to deal with the controversial areas of globalisation, such as tax havens.

Transparency and effective tax co-operation must be shared principles applied by all. Until they are, nations will need to protect themselves against loss of revenues to tax havens.

It's bad form to mention money-laundering. Instead, you talk about asset-management structures and tax beneficial schemes.