6 Things You Should Know About the $21 Trillion the World's Richest People Are Hiding In Tax Shelters

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"Money Laundering American Dreams"

6 Things You Should Know About the $21 Trillion the World's Richest People Are Hiding In Tax Shelters
July 25, 2012 | Sarah Jaffee


A new report from the Tax Justice Network found trillions of untaxed wealth that the world's richest people are hiding. Here's what you need to know.


While governments slash spending and lay off workers, citing a need for “austerity” because of the slow economy, the ultra-rich—fewer than 10 million people—have stashed an amount equal to the US and Japanese economies combined away from the tax man. This is according to a new report by the Tax Justice Network, and their findings are shocking. The lost tax revenue from offshore tax shelters, they note, “is large enough to make a significant difference to all of our conventional measures of inequality. Since most of the missing financial wealth belongs to a tiny elite, the impact is staggering.”

James S. Henry, who was former Chief Economist for McKinsey & Co. and is the author of the book The Blood Bankers as well as articles for publications including The Nation and The New York Times, dug into information from the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations, central banks, and private sector analysts and found the outlines of the giant pool of cash floating in that nebulous location known as “offshore”. (And this is just money—the report leaves out things like real estate, yachts, art, and other forms of wealth the super-rich are hiding, untaxed, in offshore tax havens.) Henry refers to it as a “black hole” in the world economy and notes that, “despite taking pains to err on the conservative side, the results are astonishing.”

Read report..