Panama Papers just the start in ‘tax war’ but more action needed
The Panama Papers have given ammunition to the fight against tax evasion, but much still needs to happen before the world’s tax dodgers run out of places to hide money, experts say.
Every [tax] euro that a multinational company fails to pay is a euro too many paid by households. It’s unacceptable
The papers, published a year ago, linked some of the world’s most powerful leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and former British prime minister David Cameron, as well as sports stars and billionaires to unreported offshore companies.
The leaking of the more than 11 million documents belonging to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca kickstarted fresh government action against the secretive world of tax fraud and evasion, piercing a little more of its obscurity.
“The automatic exchange of information, which is truly the end of banking secrecy, no longer raises objections from anybody,” Pascal Saint-Amans, Director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, told AFP.
The year since the Panama Papers has been one of “transparency”, agreed Pierre Moscovici, the EU’s Economics Commissioner.
“This fight is about justice,” he told AFP.
“Every [tax] euro that a multinational company fails to pay is a euro too many paid by households,” he said. “It’s unacceptable.”
Before the scandal broke, Panama was the last major financial centre refusing all exchange of banking information. This gave others a fig leaf to hide behind, using the Central American state’s attitude “as an excuse to do nothing”, said the OECD’s Saint-Amans.