Tax havens at home

OECD countries agree to a minimum corporate income tax rate of 15% that was the big economic news of this early summer, which sought to "ensure that large multinational companies pay their fair share of taxes everywhere," according to Mathias Cormann, secretary general of the OECD.

This tough negotiation, up to the mythical 15% agreed minimum taxation, was a historical claim of the countries most affected by tax inequality, with France, Spain or the Nordic countries, as an example. The Financial Secrecy Index (Financial Secrecy Index) estimated between 21 and 32 trillions of dollars are lost by all countries due to the financial secrecy. In the corporate tax alone, Spain loses 3,700 million in annual revenue. In practice, the official rate, which is 25%, falls to 11%.

But what is this financial secrecy?

The index, unlike others that reveal the countries that act as financial havens among the small political and economic jurisdictions where large corporations derive their assets, seeks to evaluate which countries are more or less transparent in disclosing their fiscal and financial movements.

The ISF index searches for and exposes the financial movements of corporations that seek, in some way, to evade the tax jurisdictions to which they would be entitled.

And it is here that we find that, within the same OECD that has imposed the 15% minimum tax, we find a group of first-world countries that benefit handsomely from secrecy.

United States The company is astonishing (as it is one of the main instigators of the minimum corporate tax), ranking second in financial opacity due to the enormous volume of operations it registers and the diverse legislation that applies within its States. Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerlandall at the gates of Spain and within the European family, allow opaque financial movements through which billions of unpaid taxes slip.

All of this is well illustrated in a excellent graphic by Visual Capitalist which exposes "The world's largest private tax havens" according to its title and which you can see below: