The
international tax evasion exists when a player, natural person or legal
entity is voluntarily outside of the law which it is normally subject
in its own state. This consists mainly to research a state or special
economic zone with a favourable tax regime or even non-existent in some
cases to conduct financial transactions in order often very lucrative.
It may thus be tax avoidance if the player skilfully deflects the laws
and characterized tax evasion when the player is perfectly well aware of
the risks incurred in the light of international and national
legislation in force.
These preferred spaces commonly named offshore places
question only when they put in unfair manner in competition with
non-privileged tax regime states, so that initially they appeared to
energize economically disadvantaged areas or with a high unemployment
rate difficult to bring down. Today, these areas have been somewhat
diverted from their original purpose to the ends purely speculative and
money laundering, particularly for non-commercial operations within the
banking sector.
The
general problem of this thesis is based on the importance of the
exchange of information between states. This means, as single
instrument, does it allow effectively fight offshore tax evasion?
In
order to answer to this question in the context of this thesis, we will
consider as the main themes to highlight a topic poorly developed in
university research, this area is traditionally the purview of experts
or practitioners in governmental or non-governmental, national and
international.
Among
the research topics can be developed, it seems useful to review the
following topics: offshore financial centres or offshore places, the
various national and international tax information processing; diversity
in the policy of bank secrecy; cross-border cooperation; resources
employed in the search for offences; tax information, the consistency
and continuity in dealing with financial crime among existing
organizations; amplification of the severity of fraud phenomenon
internationally; the legality of reservations on essential topics of the
international tax agreements; internationalization of tax avoidance,
tax competition between the various state systems, the difficult
implementation of legislation to different rules of law in tax matters
and the existence of more exceptions accentuating this phenomenon.
The
efficiency of existing texts relating to the exchange of tax
information in order to fight offshore tax evasion is a central issue.
In this case, it seems interesting to note that the global phenomenon of
tax evasion is permitted by the tax opacity of some states, the fiscal
sovereignty can't bear harm by international law, unless restrictively
to a community level or regional level. From then on a conflict of
existing legal norms among different national rights on the one hand and
international law on the other hand can be observed.
The
absence of international convention with binding force on the one hand
and the variety of national courts reviewing case by case issues dealing
with the intelligence exchange on the other hand, seem to lead to legal
uncertainty so that an international convention unanimously consented
would be required in the determination of a legal status devoid of
ambiguity in the tax information exchange.
Some
elements – such bank transparency; dialogue among states at the
community and international summits; fight against organized networks :
terrorism, prostitution, weapons, narcotics; cooperation between the
various intelligence services – make possible to better define the
status issue in the framework of international organizations that can
unite the states in this regard. However, there is a contradiction
between vital interests of states that questions the cooperation which
should be seamless for actively and effectively fighting against any
form of tax delinquency, communication is essential here.
Thus,
thorough examination of all these issues can determine the
effectiveness of the arrangements with regard to information exchange
between states in the tax field.
