Tax havens are located around the world. Most tax havens are rich countries, like Switzerland, Luxembourg, Britain or the United States, or dependencies of rich countries, like the British Virgin Islands or Cayman.
All countries fall somewhere on the spectrum of tax havenry. Some enable small scales of global tax abuse, while others enable huge scales. Every country can take measures tackle global tax abuse at home and abroad.
Nonetheless, the worst offending tax havens enable a far, far larger share of global tax abuse than others. These worst offenders can be bundled into four groupings.
The first is Britain, combined with its Crown Dependencies (Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man) and seven of its 14 Overseas Territories (mostly in the Caribbean, including the British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Bermuda and Turks & Caicos.)
The second is a European cluster including Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Switzerland, mostly catering to corporate activity, along with minnows such as Liechtenstein and Andorra.
A third component is the United States, which is a major secrecy haven in its own right, both at the Federal level (offering especially banking secrecy) and at the state level (with states like Delaware or South Dakota offering secretive shell companies and trusts.)
A fourth grouping consists of Asian havens, notably Hong Kong, Singapore and Macau, but also (arguably) Mauritius. Beyond these, a looser collection of less strongly affiliated havens include Dubai, Panama, Seychelles, or the Cook Islands.”
For a ranking of the jurisdictions that enable the most global corporate tax abuse, view our Corporate Tax Haven Index.