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The Anonymous Companies That Protect Human Traffickers

Human trafficking is one of the most insidious crimes in our world today.  It’s a business that profits on depriving basic rights — buying and selling them for forced labor or sexual exploitation. Unfortunately, it is the third-or fourth-largest illegal industry in the world (depending on how one measures) — and one that is growing rapidly.  It is estimated to amount to $150 billion in profits each year while keeping 21 million people in slavery — at least that we know of.

Human traffickers hide in the shadows, making them extremely elusive to authorities. Vanessa Chauhan, a strategic engagement adviser at Polaris and FACT Coalition member, says, “It’s a hidden crime and unless you’re looking for it, you’re not going to find it.”  To remain hidden, some traffickers use illicit schemes, including complex webs of anonymous companies, that allow them to quietly launder the proceeds from their illicit activity and shield them from accountability.

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The Tax Giveaway That Left Thousands Without Pay

A 2004 Offshore Tax Holiday Left 600,000 Jobless. A Decade Later, Congress Is at Risk of Making the Same Mistake
In 2004, the grass seemed greener on the other side — overseas where multinational corporations kept stashing profits.  A corporate tax policy (known as “deferral”) allows U.S. corporations to defer taxes on their profits booked offshore until they are returned to the U.S.  By 2004, deferral had led to a cash hoard of $527 billion, equivalent to 4.3 percent of GDP, amassing offshore.

Back then, President Bush signed the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA) believing that bringing home the stockpiles of cash would mean huge jobs and growth here in the U.S. The act provided a “tax holiday,” allowing corporations to return their deferred profits at an astonishingly low 5.25 percent — instead of the statutory 35% rate.

Companies — including Pfizer, Merck & Co., Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, and IBM — immediately took advantage.  Together, these five corporate giants repatriated $88 billion from their offshore accounts located in well-known tax havens such as Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and the Bahamas. According to the IRS, some 843 companies followed suit resulting in the repatriation of $312 billion in qualified earnings.  In total, the companies received $265 billion in tax deductions between 2004 to 2006.

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From Pakistan to Park Lane via Panama

How Prime Minister Sharif’s Family Used Anonymous Companies
Over a year on and the effect of the Panama Papers continues to reverberate.

 Last week, the leaks claimed another political scalp: Pakistan’s Supreme Court has removed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from office. The leaks showed how Sharif and his children were linked to prestigious Park Lane apartments in London through a complex web of anonymously owned British Virgin Island (BVI) companies.

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Treasury Department Building

Treasury Toying with Making Tax Avoidance Easier

Sometimes the long drive towards a more equitable and reasonable tax system feels like it’s one step forward, two steps back.

This month, the two steps back we risk taking come in the form of unraveling a Treasury rule established under the Obama administration. Thanks to an executive order from the Trump administration, Section 385 is currently being reviewed by the Treasury Department. The rule takes aim at curbing corporate tax haven abuse — the hallmark of a tax system rigged for the few biggest multinational corporations. Preliminary estimates from Treasury found that it’s impact on offshore tax avoidance would be significant considering that the rule would raise $7.4 billion over 10 years.

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A Simple Step to Address a Far-Reaching Problem

Today, Senators Whitehouse, Grassley, and Feinstein and Representatives Maloney, King, Royce, Waters, and Moore introduced a bipartisan bill to end the use of anonymous shell companies.  If passed by Congress and signed by the President, the measure would disrupt the global system for money laundering used by corrupt public officials, terrorists, drug cartels, human trafficking operations, and others and provide leadership to the international move toward transparency.

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World Leaders Gathered for Another Paris Agreement, and the U.S. Was Noticeably Absent

Tell me if you’ve heard this before:  Nations from around the world gathered in Paris to sign a multilateral agreement that had been negotiated over several years with the U.S. as a leading partner.   In the end, the U.S. was conspicuously absent from the ceremony and did not sign onto the final agreement.

I, of course, am referring to an effort to combat aggressive corporate tax avoidance and address the wealth-draining concerns over the growth of tax havens. See FACT’s statement on the event.  The agreement was a part of the multilateral initiative on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) negotiated through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).  Over seventy countries moved forward with an agreement to combat tax avoidance by amending bilateral tax treaties.

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