ECONOMICS MADE SIMPLE: Understanding tax havens and capital flows

A book on international taxation and capital flight from Africa was launched on November 30. It is edited by Prof Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, Sigrid Klæboe Jacobsen and Peter Ringstad from Norway and the author of this article. It is among more than 150 various outputs of the Taxation, Institutions and Participation (TIP) research project funded by the Research Council of Norway. Key issues in the book are related to tax havens and capital flows in Africa. These issues need to be widely understood. As part of the wide dissemination of the book, this article highlights some key issues related to tax havens and capital flows as partly captured in the TIP research and the book.

TIP Research
The TIP research project is a four-year international research project covering Angola, Tanzania and Zambia. It is funded by the Norwegian Research Council and implemented by the Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI) of Norway and partners, including Mzumbe University in Tanzania.
The author of this article is the main TIP researcher in Tanzania. Among the research issues and questions in the project include the way paying behaviour of domestic taxpayers is affected by the elite and transnational companies’ use of tax havens. It also investigates the way large-scale illicit capital flows affect domestic tax policies.
It addresses the way tax havens affect institutions, government accountability, citizen participation and their views of the state. It aims at producing evidence-based and policy-relevant recommendations that will enhance domestic resources mobilisation in general and tax revenue in particular. The book on Lifting the veil of secrecy: Perspectives on International Taxation and Capital Flight From Africa is among many outputs of the TIP project. It covers a number of issues of interest in its various chapters. These issues are outlined in what follows.

Tax havens   
A tax haven is a country that offers foreign individuals and businesses a comparatively very minimal tax liability. This is done in a politically and economically stable environment. Due to rather high secrecy there is little or no financial information shared with foreign tax authorities. No wonder then that these tax havens are also called secrecy jurisdictions.
They do not require individuals to reside in or businesses to operate out of their countries to benefit from local tax policies. Tax havens benefit the host country as well as the companies and individuals maintaining accounts in them. Countries benefit by drawing capital to their banks and financial institutions. This can form key foundation of a thriving financial sector in a given country and associated benefits. Individuals and corporations benefit through tax savings through tax avoidance.
This is a result of tax rates being as low as zero to very low single digits compared to relatively high taxes of double digits in their countries of citizenship or domicile. Among the tax haven countries listed in literature include, but are not limited to Andorra, the Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands, the Cook Islands, Hong Kong, The Isle of Man, Mauritius, Lichtenstein, Monaco and Panama among others.

Tax havens issues of concern
One may wonder why tax havens should be an issue of great concern in scholarly debates, policy and general development discourse. Tax havens have great possibility of denying countries their rightful tax revenues. These would be revenue needed to finance public goods and services such as education, health, water, security and infrastructure.
Tax havens are typically bad deals to developing countries, including those in Africa and beyond. Due to lack of funds that find their way to tax havens inter alia, these countries are unable to provide the needed quantity and quality of public goods and service. As a result, those who miss them – typically the poor – do suffer many and far-reaching negative implications.

Capital flows
Capital flows refer to the movement of money for various purposes, including investment, trade or business production. Capital flows include the flow of capital within corporations in form of investment capital, capital spending on operations and research and development (R&D) among others. In the context of the TIP research project, capital flows can be licit or illicit. Issues of concern are in the illicit rather than the licit typology.

Illicit capital flows
Whereas the licit capital flow typology is largely legal, the illicit is not. Illicit capital flows are among the key issues of focus in the TIP research project. Illicit capital flows include illegally earned and illegally transferred money. They include money earned through tax evasion, corruption, human traffic, terrorism, pirating and the like. Illicit flows are normally from poor developing countries mainly from Africa to the rich and developed ones.