If it moves, tax it; if it doesn’t, regulate it.  I think Ronald Reagan said that

07 Apr 2016

The revelations in the Panama Papers have added pressure on David Cameron to persuade UK tax havens to agree to create central registries of beneficial ownership before a London anti-corruption summit in May.  This is called making a drama out of a crisis. The PM’s proposal to create a central register of beneficial ownership open to public scrutiny was rejected by territories including Bermuda, the Caymans and the British Virgin Islands. Mr Cameron since suggested registries could be accessed only by British and other tax authorities and police on request, but Labour has now called on the government to consider imposing "direct rule" on British Overseas Territories if they do not comply with UK tax law. However, former attorney-general Dominic Grieve said overseas territories were “entitled to internal self-governance” and to run banking services to sustain their economies. Britain is setting up its own public register in June but critics have said a new public register of company owners will add to costs and bureaucracy for businesses while remaining toothless and unpoliced. More “Quango” jobs for the boys with another layer of bureaucracy that we don’t need while our tax authorities have lacked motivation or resources to address problems they can already solve. 

This is not simply a British rush to have more quangos: German justice minister, Heiko Mass, said the country planned to introduce a new national transparency register to make offshore companies disclose their owners’ identity. Meanwhile, France’s finance minister said Panama would again be blacklisted as an uncooperative tax haven and that a preliminary investigation into "aggravated tax fraud" would be launched.

In a Blinding Flash of the Obvious that seems to have eluded some other leaders, US President Barack Obama said the problem with global tax avoidance was that it was legal. “We shouldn’t make it legal to engage in transactions just to avoid taxes,” he said, praising instead “the basic principle of making sure everyone pays their fair share”.

Meanwhile, Nicholas Shaxson writes in the FT that America is fast becoming the tax haven of choice and that the OECD and the EU must act!