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Introduction
Over the past few years, pending problems such
as tax fraud and aggressive tax planning (tax
evasion) have gained renewed importance at
the highest levels of the EU and the G20. This
topic, which figured prominently on the agenda
of the May 2013 European Council meeting,
also constitutes an important point of the pro-
gram recently presented by the new president
of the European Commission.
The problem of tax fraud has been an impor-
tant topic at every G20 summit meeting held
since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008,
and leaders attending the London Summit in
2009 even officially declared that “the era of
banking secrecy is over.” The UN
1
and the IMF
have also paid serious attention to this topic.
The title of a report issued by the latter,
Taxing
1
Work carried out by the UN Tax Committee on this issue
has been particularly outstanding.
Times
(FMI 2013
2
), underlines the pressing im-
portance of this issue for today’s society. There
is no doubt that taxation has taken centre stage.
Tax evasion and the use of tax havens are
reaching staggering levels. The European
Commission estimates that one trillion euros in
potential tax revenue is lost annually within the
EU. This is equivalent to the GDP of Spain,
Europe’s fifth largest economy, or from another
perspective, seven annual EU budgets.
According to an estimate provided in the
Financial Secrecy Index
, a report released by the
NGO coalition Tax Justice Network, the total
value of money hidden in tax havens around the
world now stands at approximately USD 21 tril-
lion, a figure that would increase if the value of
other assets such as yachts, real estate holding
and works of art were included in the calcula-
tion as well. This is equal to the combined GDPs
2
Another very important report issued in 2014 by the IMF
on this topic was
Spillovers in International Corporate Taxa-
tion.
The fight against tax evasion
and avoidance: towards a
harmonisation of corporate
income taxes within the EU
José Luis Escario