Thursday, April 4, 2013

Lots of taxes go to Paradise - or to a haven, an oasis, a shelter

Words do not always fail us.

How do people in your country call those who hide their hard earned cash from the tax man, and what do the words we use to describe these places say?

German media typically call these places "tax/fiscal paradise" or "tax/fiscal oasis". The people who squirrel away their cash are called "fugitives", "evaders" or "refugees".

The common English terms are "tax shelter" and "tax haven". The people hiding funds are mostly "evaders" and "fugitives", very rarely "refugees". Refugee status in English seems limited to above board accepted practices such as incorporating a company in a US state with a lower tax rate than its neighbors.

The English terms are functional in nature, the protection from the adverse forces out there is the image they create in your minds.

The German terms would seem much more focused on the results. No doubt, living conditions in paradise are great. The same is true for an oasis, with the difference that you are aware that whatever surrounds an oasis is not friendly terrain.

The banks, trusts, and funds who do the hiding won't have any of this. They prefer the friendly wealth management, tax optimization, global business and banking services and other neutral sounding terminology for the discerning businessman and dictator.

It would certainly be nice to get our hands on some dictator's stash and fund a fully legal non-profit with it.

But the best we can realistically hope for is to see an article about a starving English major who published a multi-lingual dictionary of tax evasion.

On second thought, make it an app, which then gets bought by Yahoo Finance.



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