Levin Calls for Crackdown on Offshore Tax Havens

John Cummings has reported that American senators want that the Obama administration’s fiscal year 2010 budget to include an array of measures aimed at shutting down what they describe as “offshore tax abuses".

Levin clearly sees an opportunity to ride a wave of outrage over the deployment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Many of the firms listed in a GAO report are TARP recipients. For example, Morgan Stanley, which has 273 subsidiaries in tax havens or financial privacy jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and the Marshall Islands, has received $10 billion from the fund. Citigroup, with 427 subsidiaries in such jurisdictions, and Bank of America with 115, have each received $45 billion"