A Historian Looks at Tax Havens

by Charles Adams, May 2003

The recent attack on tax havens by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has depicted about 20–30 countries, called tax havens, as destructive of the high tax systems of the world, especially Europe.

The OECD argues that its members should gang up on these nations and shut down their financial centers unless their banking facilities are made “transparent” (a word of art they use, which means to place their banking information at the disposal of the national tax authorities of the world).

For those centers that will not do so, the OECD plans to place a banking embargo on their banks, preventing them from doing any banking with the OECD. This is a bold, aggressive move that would put an end to the ancient principle of English liberty that a “man’s castle is beyond the surveillance of the king.”

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