Germans Hoarding Billions of Euros out of the Country into “Tax Havens”
German citizens hoarded almost 11.9 billion euros in 2019 on the Island Guernsey in Britain, also known as the “tax haven”. Most of the offshore companies are registered on this island. The German edition Die Süddeutsche Zeitung writes about this on Tuesday, September 7, based on data from the German Federal Ministry of Finance.
According to these data, the same amount was hoarded in Liechtenstein. At the same time, 8.5 billion euros belonging to German citizens were transferred to the Cayman Islands in 2019.
Switzerland is not included in the list, as this neutral country has refused to disclose statistics. At the same time, 133 billion euros belonging to German taxpayers were transferred to Swiss banks in 2018.
Meanwhile, the representative of the left-wing of the Bundestag, Fabio de Masi, has already criticized a number of countries for concealing the data. “By doing so, these countries limit transparency and cover-up tax crimes,” he said.
According to the reports of 36 major European banks, they gain a 20 billion EUR profit a year in the “tax havens”. This is stated in the research of the New European Tax Observatory.
At the same time, financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank are hoarding their funds in such areas to pay lower taxes. Commenting on the situation, Sven Giegold, a Member of the European Parliament from Union-90/Greens, said that it was necessary to discuss the issue of effective minimum taxation of large companies.
Researchers have written about moving money to tax havens to pay lower taxes. They ranked 17 regions such as the Bahamas, EU countries such as Ireland, Malta, or Luxembourg oases because of their low tax rates.
The data leak from Appleby in 2017 was the main source of an international journalistic investigation, later called the “Paradise Dossier”. Later the Die Süddeutsche Zeitung seized a document proving how widespread tax evasion was, despite numerous company revelations.
