The Soverign Society Offshore
Our friends and colleagues at the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P) have just released a new video, described in their press statement as "debunking the outlandish and mendacious rhetoric that President Obama has used to attack lo w-tax jurisdictions."
As one who makes a living stringing together words in what is, hopefully, a pleasing, convincing or infuriating manner, I must express my admiration for any group and its writers, who can so carefully choose words as to describe perfectly the conduct of the President in his calculated attacks on tax havens.
For example, the dictionary definition of outlandish is "freakishly or grotesquely strange or odd, peculiar, queer, eccentric, curious." Mendacious describes "telling lies, esp. habitually dishonest; lying; untruthful." And by the way, a demagogue is "an orator or political leader who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people."
Mitchell vs. Obama
The video, entitled "President Obama's Dishonest Demagoguery on Tax Havens," examines the President's assertion that targeting so called "tax havens "will generate $100 billion in tax revenue each year by reducing illegal tax evasion. However, the video's narrator, our friend Dan Mitchell (left) of the Cato Institute, points out that the White House now claims that the President's international tax plan will only generate $8.7 billion over a ten year period.
This phony $100 billion number, often bandied about by the notorious anti-tax haven U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich),(right) is one we have addressed at length. Even the IRS Commissioner denies the accuracy of this fictious number.
House that Obama Bilked
The CfP video also reviews our own expressed concerns about President Obama's accusations that the Ugland House building (below) in the Cayman Islands is a vehicle for "tax scams" simply because thousands of businesses are registered at the same address
But as explained in the video, a company's legal address generally has no relation to where it is headquartered or where it conducts most of its operations. Indeed, the video shows a building in Delaware – smaller than Ugland House – that is legal home to more than 200,000 companies.
"The Center put together this video because tax competition is a serious subject deserving honest debate," said CF&P Foundation President Andrew F. Quinlan. "The fact that the President feels compelled to dissemble and exaggerate indicates that he recognizes that his attack on tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy is unjustified on a factual basis."
We hope you not only enjoy this CfP video, but that you support their good work with your generous contributions. In other CfP videos you can learn more about the economic benefits of tax havens; the moral case for tax havens, and why anti-tax haven demagoguery is misguided.