>It makes a gross assumption that people are incapable of keeping their government in check.
There is a difference between keeping a government in check, and ensuring governance stays relevant. Western democracy usually ensures the former, but is not very good on the latter.
>Subverting reasonable social good is an active harm that is reasonable given the circumstances (like an ambulance or fire truck asserting the right of way on a city street), but I fail to see why that should apply to any and all business.
This is more of a political argument than anything else, and I'm not too keen on going into my political views on this matter (although I'm sure it is not too difficult to infer them from my posts). What I will say however is that I think you are conferring an arbitrary civic duty on corporations, with the dutiful obligations of which being up for a significant amount of interpretation across societies and jurisdictions.
It is not unfair, and it is not extra-legal. Anyone can offshore their company and in some cases it can take less than an day (incorporating an LLP in the UK takes a couple of hours) with virtually zero barriers of entry, all fully compliant with the relevant legislation.
If legal regulatory arbitrage (through tax havens) is unfair, then the corollary is that any kind of business profit arising from utilising uncommon knowledge is unfair. I think this position is untenable.
I think the true moral crime here is preventing sovereign nations (using bullying tactics no less) who lack natural resources and other income-generating resources from offering convenient and flexible regulatory climates to business who need it. Singapore and Hong Kong were two countries that did this for decades and look where they are now - why shouldn't Vanuatu or Seychelles be offered the same opportunity?
>This may be terribly naive, but doesn't that make the business de-facto illegal? What kind of legitimate business deserves to buck paying into the systems that support them? As a default I want to disagree, but I would like to know what business needs to operate outside of these constraints.
These constraints that you speak of are entirely arbitrary (geographical delineation) and were designed for a time before the internet. I would instead ask the question why Western governments are refusing to get with the changing tides and reform their archaic taxation codes to account for an increasingly globalised economy.
>Surely the businesses utilizing the favours of banks like Cayman are not being operated within tyrannical countries (which is the first and only reasoning I can see for operating in the manor you prescribed).
Not at all. There certainly exists a subgroup of individuals, companies, and institutions that operate in jurisdictions where there is a huge amount of uncertainty, but there is also a very large contingent that offshores their business to reduce regulatory burden and reduce tax liabilities, many of whom are individuals and companies that you and I have heard of. I doubt they will be using Cayman National Bank though, it is more likely that they will be using banks that you and I have also heard of like Barclays or DBS.
There are two dimensions here, one is the tax liability and the second is regulatory compliance.
Yes, the tax liability is significantly reduced when using offshore structures and I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing especially since an ultra-low corporate tax rate makes it possible to offer our customers services at a lower price than otherwise - I see this as a good thing.
The second is that regulatory compliance is much, much, much easier especially when working in industries like finance, insurance, or crypto. The flexibility and clarity of the regulatory climate in offshore jurisdictions is a huge advantage as it makes it possible for us to focus on doing business rather than narrowly tiptoeing an arbitrary and complex regulatory line as is the case in "home" jurisdictions like the US or the EU. This is further compounded when you have a distributed workforce located in various jurisdictions (which sometimes changes on a week-to-week basis).
I have a fair bit of insight into this industry, both from friends, acquaintances, and family who use a variety of offshore structures to manage their wealth and from my own dealings (the company I founded and currently manage is offshored for tax and legal purposes).
What people don’t realise is that aside from a couple outliers offshore jurisdictions aren’t that shady at all and the major ones are usually under the protection and sometimes outright control of much larger and much more influential jurisdictions, with the United Kingdom being the leader here. If tax avoidance was as simple as just starting a business in a zero or low tax jurisdictions we would see a lot more of this kind of business being done in Africa (with the notable exception of Seychelles today) than the Caribbean overseas territories, but mature legal frameworks and more importantly reliable governments are incredibly important to both small time players who may stash some cash offshore as savings and large multinationals. If anything shady (civil unrest, wealth confiscation etc.) were to go down in the British Virgin Islands for example the United Kingdom has a nuclear option (as BVI is for all intents and purposes a Crown colony) to unseat the sitting government and bring order, which is incredibly valuable as an insurance policy.
Yes, it is possible to incorporate offshore corporations in less-reputable jurisdictions like Vanuatu or Seychelles, but doing business with these vehicles is next to impossible because no reputable bank in Singapore, Hong Kong, or Switzerland is going to want to have you as a customer if they don’t already know you due to compliance reasons. Without a bank account your ability to funnel and store money in these opaque conduits becomes rather difficult and there really isn’t any point any longer. Of course, there are small shady banks in certain jurisdictions (notably those that aren’t under indirect British control) that will take you on as a client, but then you run into the risk of them running away with your money or defaulting.
The money itself isn’t really
managed by or from these island nations/colonies either, and in the cases where there are nominee directors the beneficial owner will usually have a power of attorney as well as an undated resignation letter from the nominee director which effectively gives them wherever they are total control of the company.
What is interesting is that crypto is changing all of this due it being completely outside the severely regulated financial sector, opening up a ton of opportunity for small island nations to compete on tax efficiency without being subject to the quite frankly draconian rules that usually places them on US/EU/OECD blacklists which can create severe consequences for the economies of said nations through sanctions.
Very interesting times indeed, and I think we will see more and more companies (particularly tech companies) being offshored than before in the next few years.
There is a difference between keeping a government in check, and ensuring governance stays relevant. Western democracy usually ensures the former, but is not very good on the latter.
>Subverting reasonable social good is an active harm that is reasonable given the circumstances (like an ambulance or fire truck asserting the right of way on a city street), but I fail to see why that should apply to any and all business.
This is more of a political argument than anything else, and I'm not too keen on going into my political views on this matter (although I'm sure it is not too difficult to infer them from my posts). What I will say however is that I think you are conferring an arbitrary civic duty on corporations, with the dutiful obligations of which being up for a significant amount of interpretation across societies and jurisdictions.