That flag you like to wave: is not yours
That constitution you like to brag about: not yours either

Those Ministers driving around in those cars: the power they possess is not theirs either but has simply been delegated to them via entrustment…by guess who?

And the most delusional Bermudians of them all are the black professionals in Bermuda’s corporate world.

So the evocation of the US being the biggest tax haven is highly irrelevant…to this conversation and speaks to your naivete of geo political matters…

The values of the international community- what precisely are these?
That is another issue altogether.

The United States “is effectively the biggest tax haven in the world”
Andrew Penney, Rothschild & Co.[1]

In 2010, the United States implemented the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA); the law required financial firms around the world to report accounts held by US citizens to the Internal Revenue Service. The US on the other hand REFUSED the Common Reporting Standard set up by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, alongside Vanuatu and Bahrain.[2]

This means the US receives tax and asset information from us for American assets and other income abroad, but DOES NOT have to share information about what happens with other countries’ citizens within the United States. In other words, it has become an attractive tax haven. The obvious solution to this problem is for the UK to press the United States to join the bandwagon and enact a comparable reform. Then perhaps the rest of the world will follow suit.

Thankfully there are bills in Congress that would accomplish this, including the bipartisan Corporate Transparency Act and the True Incorporation Transparency for Law Enforcement (TITLE) Act. In addition, the House Financial Services Committee is seriously considering approving bipartisan money laundering legislation, the Counter Terrorism and Illicit Finance Act, which would also allow for the collection of ownership information.

These bills would not go so far as the UK law in the sense that the US Government WILL NOT publicly publish who owns which business entity, rather only make information available to law enforcement authorities trying to crack down on tax evasion and other crimes.

So, I ask….if the United States (one of the biggest tax dodging nations on planet earth – https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-28/the-u-s-is-becoming-the-world-s-new-tax-haven) DOES NOT have to disclose this information and bullies other nations into revealing their data with FATCA requirements, why the hell should we have to make these registers public by way of UK legislation? Wouldn’t this have the effect of people moving their funds from Bermuda to the USA where their details will never be disclosed? Are we crazy to release this data? This is exactly what happened in Switzerland and look at their banks now – EMPTY!

If the UK continues to press this information to be released, this would be enough of a case for INDEPENDECE! Premier Burt, don’t give in on this one until the entire world releases their data. We have nothing to gain and everything to lose on this decision!

Why don’t you tell us your banking details Clem? So we can see how much you make, spend, your assets etc. That transparent enough for you? The UK doesn’t have a public register of beneficial ownership so it’s OK for them to tell their overseas territories to do it….?

Governments don’t create wealth or grow the economy so what makes you think they’re entitled to someone’s hard earned dollars? They don’t have a divine right to people’s earnings so there is nothing wrong with avoiding tax – especially coming from the tax haven that is the UK! They give more tax breaks and tax deals to big corporates than we do.

Hear hear independence!!

There are constitutional and legal defences to this. Burt should be using those, as well as sophisticated diplomatic discussion.

Reciting slogans and acting ‘tough’ will just make things worse. This is not a two-bit union dispute where you act tough for a few days and the other side backs down.

I thought the ‘Bermuda standard was all about being a world leader in transparancy.

The murky world of tax avoidance deprives millions of pounds from the treasury of governments. In the case of the UK, they need to spend lots more money on defence to counter the threats from countries hostile to the values of the international community. This issue is an external global issue(remember the money comes into Bermuda from outside our territorial borders)

It is hard to see how an externally focussed issue of global tax avoidance can be framed as a local issue. It might be a convienient narrative to spin for 35 minutes, but it is not true.

Please show real leadership.