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This map shows some of the many ways in which corporations and business generally seek to avoid state taxation. It also shows how many states, especially in the islands in the Atlantic and Pacific, find legal means of benefiting from this search. To emphasize the role of the islands, all the states involved have been artificially depicted as such.
The map isolates tax havens, flags of convenience, free production zones and offshore manufacturing zones as the primary means of tax avoidance. It is in the nature of the topic that such a map cannot be exhaustive; private capital’s search for havens of one sort or another is relentless, inventive, and often successfully cloaked in secrecy.
The difference between major and minor tax havens is one of financial importance, as judged by the private banking sources consulted.
States offering registration of flags of convenience are those which provide shipping companies with the advantages of nominal or low taxation, and little or no regulation of safety or working conditions on board.
Free production zones are areas set aside for offshore manufacturing or assembly plants. Major zones are defined as those in which 10,000 or more workers were employed in 1975. Offshore plants may operate both inside and outside free production zones. They are based on local labour but export all their output. They enjoy tax and customs privileges. The free production zones featured on this map relate to Africa, Asia and Latin American only. Others, in Ireland and, increasingly in Eastern Europe, have been excluded on the grounds that they are as yet unimportant in their economic and social effect on their host economies.
HTML last updated on 29 November 2020