By Bob Bauman
But this isn’t the first time that the U.S. has been called out for its tax haven hypocrisy…
Earlier this year, at the G-20 Summit in London, The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg's Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker,(left) told it like it was:, "I find the treatment of certain states to be incomprehensible.” Juncker had said previously that if Luxembourg were put on any international list of offshore financial centers then “Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming should also be named and shamed as tax havens.”
“The G20 has no credibility if Delaware and several other tax friendly U.S. states are allowed to pass under the radar: If there must be a blacklist, then America should have its place on it. I would like all the bold leaders in Europe who insisted that those three E.U. countries [Luxembourg, Belgium and Austria] that practice banking secrecy drop it, show the same courage towards the United States… If there must be a blacklist then, America should have its place on it,”
The issue Juncker raised about Delaware contrasts nicely with a bit of political demagoguery Mr. Obama repeatedly used during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign…
Obama several times referred to an office building in the Cayman Islands that, he said, supposedly housed 12,000 U.S.-based corporations. "That's either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax scam in the world," he said. The building is Ugland House, (right) the home office of the international law firm, Maples and Calder. It is the address of almost 19,000 companies, many of them American.
Biggest building in the world? Hardly…
How about a single low-rise, yellow brick building…1209 Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware. That building must be ten times larger, since it’s the legally registered office of more than 200,000 companies including Ford, American Airlines, General Motors, Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken.
In both Delaware and the Cayman Islands, there is nothing sinister about foreign corporations registering there. That act allows them to take advantage of their home countries lawful tax breaks allowed for foreign investment and income earned offshore.