Impose collective sanctions on tax havens: ex-UK PM to Europe

Former BritishPrime Minister Gordon Brown today called on Europe to impose collective sanctions on tax havens in a bid to halt the drain of trillions of dollars revenue to secretive offshore destinations.
The former Labour prime minister said that only Europe could prompt an "unwilling" US into a global effort to stamp out evasion costing USD 7 trillion a year by drawing up a tax haven blacklist and ensuring there were "no treasure islands for the money launderers".
"Ifwe are to ensure no hiding places for tax evaders, no safe haven for tax avoiders and no treasure islands for the money launderers who hide an estimated USD 7.5 trillion (5.2 trillion pounds) of global wealth, we need the automatic exchange of tax information worldwide," he said.

"In addition to a comprehensive European blacklist of tax havens as the first step to a global blacklist, we should agree that British overseas territories and crown dependencies that fail to comply cannot be excluded from the blacklist; and the UK should now require them to have public registers of beneficial owners," Brown was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
Britain cannot achieve this on its own. And with America currently resisting reciprocal tax arrangements, collective action by all 28 countries of the European Union to blacklist avoiders, impose sanctions and even levy withholding taxes - on our own overseas territories, if necessary - is currently the one game in town, Brown said.

He said that the way forward lies in balancing national autonomy with continental cooperation to achieve progressive goals at a time when "wave after crushing wave of globalisation" had led to demands to "bring control back home".
Tax evasion has become a potent political issue since the onset of the global financial and economic crisis eight years ago. Most developed countries have seen an upsurge in voter anger at the ability of rich individuals and multinational companies to find ways of avoiding tax during a period of austerity.