What Is The U.S. Position On Offshore Tax Havens?

For decades, the United States has been working with other countries, on a bilateral and multilateral basis, to improve the ability of U.S. tax officials to obtain information needed to detect, stop and prosecute tax evasion. Tax havens with offshore financial sectors and bank and corporate secrecy laws have been a major barrier to tax enforcement efforts by the United States and other
countries. In 1998, with strong U.S. support, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) initiated a multilateral project which resulted, in part, in issuing a list of 35 tax havens that have failed to cooperate with international tax evasion inquiries and threatening defensive measures unless these countries agree to improve their cooperation. This hearing will examine past and current U.S. efforts to convince offshore tax havens to cooperate with U.S. efforts to stop tax evasion, the role of the OECD tax haven project in light of U.S. objectives, and the current status of U.S. support for the project, in particular for the core element requiring
information exchange.