Tax Havens and Bank Secrecy?
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In the last few year, developed countries used their pressure and started signing tax treaties with tax havens. What was the impact? Johannesen and Zucman wrote an interesting empirical article on this topic:
The End of Bank Secrecy? An Evaluation of the G20 Tax Haven Crackdown
By Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman
During the financial crisis, G-20 countries compelled tax havens to
sign bilateral treaties providing for exchange of bank information.
Policymakers have celebrated this global initiative as the end of
bank secrecy. Exploiting a unique panel dataset, our study is the
first attempt to assess how the treaties affected bank deposits in tax
havens. Rather than repatriating funds, our results suggest that tax
evaders shifted deposits to havens not covered by a treaty with their
home country. The crackdown thus caused a relocation of deposits
at the benefit of the least compliant havens. We discuss the policy
implications of these findings.