With this Blog I would like to make available to all those interested, family, friends, colleagues, and both adversaries and sympathizers of my thesis, the product of many years of research, interviews, articles, references and collaborations that focus upon Panama as an international center for business and financial services. Here I portray Panama as a young democracy with a dynamic economy, which is competing with the world’s major financial and business centers for the same resources. I feel the need to refute some of the myths and fallacies that weigh upon my country, sustaining my criteria with facts and references. I expose the United States of America´s (USA) double standards and its unfair competition. I strongly criticize the role of the OECD as a protector of the financial interests of its members, thus lacking the status of a truly international organization. But more than anything else, the driving force behind this effort has been my pride as a Panamanian which has led me to devote the better part of my life supporting the development of this great young nation.
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by Eduardo Morgan Jr. *This article will be published by Tax Notes International. Published by Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P) From The Center for Freedom and Prosperity (Washington, D.C., Wednesday, April 18, 2012) The IRS has announced that they will adopt an unpopular proposed regulation to require reporting of interest paid to nonresident alien depositors. The interest is not taxable under the US tax code, and both lawmakers and experts predict it will result in a loss of foreign investment in the US. Alan Winston Granwell The Increasing Convergence Among Tax, Criminal, Money Laundering, and Evidence Gathering Summary: http://www.eduardomorgan.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/International-Tax-Enforcement-v3-Read-Only.pdf Continue reading The Rise of International Tax Enforcement. Bloomberg April, 2012 Reprinted from Tax Notes Int´l, April 9, 2012, p. 139 By Bruce Zagaris Bruce Zagaris is a partner of Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe, LLP, Washington, D.C. and a writter-editor for The International Enforcement Law Reporter (www.ielr.com). Mr. Zagari´s practice includes structuring international business transactions and specially international tax aspects. He has served as a consultant, counsel and lobbyist for fourteen governments on various subjects. He is a frequent speaker at programs of the Practicing Law Institute, American Law Institute-American Bar Association, World Trade Center, and showcase programs at the American Bar Association’s Annual Conventions on international taxation. The Levin/Conrad anti-tax-haven provisions, if enacted, have the potential to add more egulatory diversity and impede globalization of international financial services. They will impose new burdens on Treasury at a time when it can better allocate its limited resources to more important matters. The U.S. should abandon the concept of an offshore secrecy and tax haven jurisdiction on which the Levin/Conrad anti-tax-haven provisions are based. Instead, the U.S. should champion multilateral and bilateral solutions. for corporate transparency, it should resist these aggressive unilateral and punitive enforcement initiatives, since the contrast between lack of U.S. compliance with international standards and the U.S. government’s own unilateral extraterritorial enforcement undermines the requirement of a level playing field, on which the legitimacy of the international standards is based. The supposed revenue gains from the anti-tax-haven provisions seem not to have taken into account the likely disinvestment by foreign investors in both U.S. portfolio investment and FDI or the continued trend of accelerated expatriation. The potential for disputes brought by financial institutions and governments, which are already exasperated over the burdens and costs of complying with FATCA, is significant. Until the U.S. meets the international standards for corporate transparency, it should resist these aggressive unilateral and punitive enforcement initiatives, since the contrast between lack of U.S. compliance with international standards and the U.S. government’s own unilateral extraterritorial enforcement undermines the requirement of a level playing field, on which the legitimacy of the international standards is based. The supposed revenue gains from the anti-tax-haven provisions seem not to have taken into account the likely disinvestment by foreign investors in both U.S. portfolio investment and FDI or the continued trend of accelerated expatriation. The potential for disputes brought by financial institutions and governments, which are already exasperated over the burdens and costs of complying with FATCA, is significant.
Published: Tuesday, 21 Feb 2012 Shielding assets from the tax man or from overly inquisitive regulators is a time-honored strategy for the wealthy. Some turn to secretive financial havens like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands. Or there’s always Fernley, Nevada. That’s right, Fernley, Nevada—a small community of about 20,000 residents located 30 miles outside Reno. Drive down Wedge Lane, the winding road that gets its name because of the golf community it runs through (near the corner of Dog Leg Court and Divot Drive), and you will find the unassuming home of businessman Robert Harris, 65, who describes himself as a former bartender with an eighth grade education. Continue reading Ranch House Near Reno is a Thriving Tax Haven, and It’s Not Alone by CNBC Eduardo Morgan´s Blog invites you to read this interesting book about politics of global governance and the central importance of anti-money laundering as a site of global power. THE MONEY LAUNDRY-Regulating Criminal Finance in the Global Economy, J.C. Sharman- Cornell University Press- Cornell Studies in Political Economy The economic crisis the OECD countries are experiencing, and which has caused the dislocation of public finances and affected millions of people due to huge unemployment, has among others, its origins in the great immorality with which these countries have managed the financial system. The OECD´s geniuses failed to notice the creation of instruments without real substance or other “brilliant operations” to stimulate the speculative game, such as insuring them, for the sole purpose of speculation and profit. Yet, they were prompt and ready to attribute the crisis to the activities of the countries they call, in a pejorative manner, “tax havens” or offshore financial centers. It seems that those in control of the OECD were not aware that the IMF had determined that the so-called tax havens or offshore financial centers were better regulated and managed more seriously than the onshore centers which operate in OECD member countries. Thus the pejorative terms no longer made sense. (See Public Information Notice (PIN) No. 08/82July 9, 2008). Continue reading The Money Laundry by J.C. Sharman (Washington, D.C., Tuesday, February 21, 2012) The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation, joined by 23 of the country’s most influential free market and taxpayer rights organizations, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urging withdrawal of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulation that would discourage capital from the U.S. economy and weaken the American financial system. The rule (REG-146097-09), proposed in January 2011, would force U.S. banks to report deposit interest paid to nonresident aliens – even in the face of 90-plus years of law designed to attract such funds and despite bipartisan Congressional opposition. Text of the letter can be found below. Continue reading Coalition for Tax Competition Letter Seeks Withdrawal of Destructive IRS Interest-Reporting Regulation Eduardo Morgan Jr. Before I start my presentation, I believe it is important to refer to the following exchange of letters: AUGUST 18, 1904 From John Hay, Secretary of State, to Jose Domingo de Obaldia, Ambassador of Panama in Washington, who had objected the appropriation of the ports of Panama and Colon by the United States. “Before an official response to the matters presented therein, I venture to inquire whether the present communications were written in the light of the note from Mr. Bunau-Varilla, dated last January 19, regarding the interpretation of certain paragraphs of the treaty. For your convenience, I enclose a copy of that note.”[1] Continue reading From Ghetto to Global Port: Panama Maritime Power I’m not a big fan of Mitt Romney. I hammered him the day before Christmas for being open to a value-added tax, and criticized him in previous posts for his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social Security reform, his anemic list of proposed budget savings, and his reprehensible support for ethanol subsidies. Continue reading Mitt Romney and Bain Capital Were Right to Utilitize So-Called Tax Havens |
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Copyright © 2012 Eduardo Morgan Jr. - All Rights Reserved
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