Banks and Tax Heavens

Mona BARAKE * Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne ; Labex RéFi.

Gunther CAPELLE-BLANCARD ** Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne ; Labex RéFi ; Paris School of Business. Contact : gunther.capelle-blancard@univ-paris1.fr.

Mathias LÉ *** Banque de France. Les opinions exprimées dans cet article n'engagent que leurs auteurs et ne sauraient refléter la position de leurs institutions. Les auteurs tiennent à remercier Vincent Bouvatier, Anne-Laure Delatte et Kévin Parra Ramirez pour leurs conseils et leurs remarques.

UBS in 2008, Offshore Leaks in 2013, Lux Leaks in 2014, Swiss Leaks in 2015, Panama Papers and Football Leaks in 2016, Paradise Papers in 2017... Since the global financial crisis, scandals after scandals, tax havens are under pressure. Long considered marginal by economists, this issue has been the subject of much academic work in recent years. Studies confirm the massive weight of these micro-States (nearly 10 trillion assets registered, nearly half of foreign direct investments...), their very significant impact on the effective taxation of multinationals, the loss of tax revenue for other States (several hundred billion), as well as the key role played by financial intermediaries. Since the mid-1970s, the BIS has published data on cross-border bank outstandings, which shows that tax havens host nearly 20 % of cross-border outstandings when non-consolidated positions are considered. In addition, the European Union has succeeded in requiring since 2016 its banks to make public their activities in all countries, including tax havens (Country-by-Country Reporting, CbCR). These data show that tax havens account for 18 % of European banks' turnover and 29 % of their profit abroad, while they employ only 9 % of their workforce abroad.