We have heard a lot recently about Panama becoming more transparent with its bank account holders who are US Citizens.  As a US Citizen we are born with a bar code on our ass that is scanned every time we do anything anywhere in the world and yet our country is one of the biggest tax havens in the world.  Here is an article that I read in another publication that I keep up with as part of my Miami real estate operation.  

Wayne Tompkins All Articles    

Daily Business Review  

Offshore financial centers are often thought of as palm-fringed Caribbean islands concerned primarily with taxes, but entities that offer similar benefits are hiding in plain sight in the financial capitals of London and New York.   

“It’s summed up in the word ‘escape,'” author Nicholas Shaxson told the ninth annual OffshoreAlert Conference in Miami Beach on Tuesday.   

“If you look at what these places offer: low to zero taxes, secrecy, various forms of escape from financial regulation, and then you look at the jurisdictions that offer these things, you will come to the conclusion inevitably that the biggest tax havens are places like the United States and the United Kingdom.”   

Without that understanding, he said, the offshore system will never be understood and it will remain under the radar “as long as it’s associated with celebrity tax dodgers and mafiosi, whereas in my analysis tax havens are right in the heart of the global economy today.”   

He also makes the argument that such tax havens are not designed to benefit the local populations of the entities that host them. “The actual job creation for locals is quite small,” said Shaxson, who has written a book critical of offshore tax havens.   

The conference hosted by the Miami-based publication OffshoreAlert is hosting 230 attendees from 16 jurisdictions including many from such well-known offshore centers as Grand Cayman and the Turks & Caicos Islands.   

The first day of the conference, which concludes today at the Ritz-Carlton South Beach, wasted no time offering the sort of spirited discussions it has become known for as a panel of offshore supporters and detractors faced off.   

“To suggest that all offshore financial centers are designed purely for the benefit of foreigners is actually flat wrong,” said Tim Ridley, a former chairman of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. He said that many offshore centers are based in small nations and jurisdictions that do not have the benefit of huge natural resources and rely on human capital.   

“The suggestion that the benefits of the thriving financial services industry do not flow through to the local population … and that they are still living in poverty is flat wrong,” Ridley said, noting that many of his fellow Caymanians have seen a substantial increase in their standard of living. “It does exist to benefit the local population.”   

Jack Blum, a veteran attorney and congressional investigator who chairs the Tax Justice Network, said the heart of the problem is a globalized economy where the regulations and tax laws of multiple jurisdictions can be arbitraged to minimize both. Everyone from organized crime figures to dictators have not hesitated to take advantage, he said.   

Some panelists decried the double standard of small nations’ offshore centers being singled out for criticism when entities within many of the world’s largest economies are doing the same things.   

“As the only person up here who has spent his entire working life in an OFC … My fundamental position is after sub-prime mortgages, liar loans and Enron, the U.S. doesn’t have the moral standing to tell me what I have to do,” said Kevin Higgins, managing director of the Turks & Caicos Islands Financial Services Commission.