A landmark German assault on tax dodgers who allegedly stash cash in Liechtenstein overlooks domestic failings and practices by neighbors like Luxembourg and Switzerland, tax experts say.
The finance ministry threatened last week to tax all financial transfers to Liechtenstein unless the Alpine nation relaxed its banking secrecy codes and helped track Germans targeted in a massive tax fraud probe.
But a foreign lawyer who works in Germany called the threat "ridiculous."
"The only way this proposal works is to organize an international boycott against Liechtenstein," said the tax expert, who asked to remain anonymous.
And "civil and tax laws of modern nation-states are simply too complex -- and too frequently in flux -- to make rigorous international cooperation anything other than a pipe dream," he said.
Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck was quoted yesterday by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper as saying that Germany sought a new tax agreement with Liechtenstein, warning that Berlin was mulling "the possibility of significantly complicating business transactions" with the principality.
The finance ministry suspects wealthy Germans of hiding up to 4 billion euros (US$6 billion) in Liechtenstein trusts, depriving Berlin of hundreds of millions of euros in tax revenues.
Meanwhile, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which has placed Liechtenstein on a list of "uncooperative tax havens," urges governments to reach out to taxpayers as officials clamp down on fraud.
The OECD advises countries "to try to make their tax systems as simple as possible so that taxpayers who want to comply are able to comply easily," said Grace Perez-Navarro, deputy director of the body's center for tax policy and administration.
She said that people "are not always fully aware of where the line is between legal and illegal."
A previous German campaign managed to diminish flows of funds to Luxembourg, along with pressure from the EU, but international tax specialist Francois Hellio said loopholes still exist.
Luxembourg ditched a 1929 tax-free holding company statute, "but it recently created an inheritance holding scheme that resembles the previous one," said Hellio, a partner at CMS Bureau Francis Lefebvre, outside Paris.
Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland have also resisted disclosing the identity of foreign account holders.
They compromised by agreeing to an EU withholding tax, which the foreign lawyer said was "sometimes referred to as the `tax on the stupid' because it is so easy to avoid."
German professor and tax specialist Lorenz Jarass said the German push on Liechtenstein was "peanuts" and that Berlin was sending a message to Bern.
"Germany will do all it can to snare a Swiss bank," he said.
Meanwhile, because the means of money transfers are so quick, the foreign lawyer said Germany "was reduced to picking the pockets of those who can't move.
"They tax labor and they tax consumption, those are the primary sources of revenues," he said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique