Finding the Good News in Widespread Tax Cheating
Even the documents reported to be from Mossack Fonseca showed a decline in the number of offshore companies set up by the firm. Ten years ago, the number was around 13,200; in 2015 it was just over 4,300.
.. Mr. Zucman’s book, published last year, asserts that Switzerland and Luxembourg remain powerful magnets to money seeking anonymity. And he argues that efforts relying on bankers to report data, as the O.E.C.D.’s approach does, are likely to fall short.
.. Mr. Zucman is skeptical that the bankers will sufficiently comply. “They have been serving criminals and tax evaders — and they’ve being doing that for decades,” he said.
.. In 2014, the United States obtained a criminal conviction against Credit Suisse, which pleaded guilty to aiding tax evasion and paid $2.6 billion in penalties. That sounds like a lot. Yet the bank’s chief executive said at the time that the punishment did not have “any material impact on our operational or business capabilities.”