More leftwing hypocrisy.

Dan Mitchell, Andrew Quinlan to speak as low-tax jurisdictions respond to international assault.

The OECD shills for big government in the US, an update in tax collectors war on low-tax jurisdictions, and how to fight back.

This article appeared in IFC Review.

The Senate included a Levin-Conrad-Whitehouse amendment in the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Bill (S. 1813) that expands onerous powers in the Patriot Act in order to give the Treasury Department unchecked powers to extend US tax law beyond American borders.

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s president, Andrew F. Quinlan, reacted today to Senator Carl Levin’s stated plan to use the amendment process on the small business lending bill to attack so-called “tax havens.” Proving to be tone deaf when it comes to the problems facing average Americans, Senator Levin wants to use a bill his colleagues claim is aimed at creating jobs and helping small businesses to place new burdens on investors that will end up destroying jobs.

Last week’s Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Global Tax Forum featured an unusual beginning as a looming hurricane in the Pacific forced the event from Cabo to Mexico City. This created special challenges for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity delegation since the government did not put jets at our disposal for the last-minute trip, as they did for official delegates. But we persevered and made our way to the Mexican capital.

The past several months have witnessed an unfortunate setback in the fight for good tax policy. Bolstered by a shift in the U.S. position from benign neglect to active support, anti-tax competition ideologues have won a somewhat significant victory. Low-tax jurisdictions, faced with direct and indirect threats of sanctions from powerful nations, have been forced to weaken their human-rights policies by agreeing that privacy laws no longer protect foreign investors. Indeed, jurisdictions are being coerced to sign agreements to provide confidential data upon request to at least 12 of their high-tax brethren.

Low-tax jurisdictions are being attacked by several committees in the U.S. Congress. These so-called havens are being assaulted by international bureaucracies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Commission (EC). And they are being turned into scapegoats by the politicians meeting this week for the G-20 Summit. These events do not bode well for supporters of tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy.

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation, joined by 31 of the country’s most influential free-market groups, has sent a letter urging the World Bank “to stand on the side of tax competition and fiscal sovereignty and not for bigger and more intrusive governments.” The Coalition for Tax Competition letter is in response to an […]