Centre To Fight For Free Markets At Global Tax Forum

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

01 September 2009

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity (CF&P) has announced that it will be lending support to embattled low tax jurisdictions during the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Tax Forum, which gets underway in Los Cabos, Mexico, on September 1.

The Center said that it hopes to educate delegates at the conference about the benefits of tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy.

The CF&P was created in 2000 to defend low tax states against the “fiscal imperialism” of the OECD, and it has attended previous Global Forums to assist jurisdictions in resisting the OECD's insidious march towards global tax hegemony.

“Beginning with the publication of Harmful Tax Competition: An Emerging Global Issue in 1998, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has been working on behalf of high-tax nations to prop up inefficient tax regimes by seeking to hinder the flow of jobs and capital to low-tax jurisdictions,” says the Centre. “CF&P will serve both as a sounding board and as a source of strategic intelligence for the low-tax nations and territories at the summit.”

CF&P President Andrew Quinlan commented: "High-tax nations have succeeded in bullying low-tax jurisdictions into signing agreements to provide information about foreign investors in response to specific requests. This is unfortunate, but the real concern is that this is just the first step in an endless series of demands.”

The Cato Institute's Dan Mitchell quipped: "You don't turn a crocodile into a vegetarian by feeding him your leg, and the same is true in the world of tax."

He added: “High-tax nations will now move the goal posts and make further demands for things such as unlimited information sharing, special rules for monitoring high net worth individuals, and harmonization of corporate taxation."

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