The Future of Offshore

Sharman, Jason. "The Future of Offshore" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association 48th Annual Convention, Hilton Chicago, CHICAGO, IL, USA, Feb 28, 2007 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p180572_index.html

Abstract: Since the turn of the century Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs), or tax havens, have been roiled by various challenges from the G7 states and international organisations including the OECD, the EU and the FATF. Collectively these interventions, premised on combatting tax evasion and money laundering, have tended to erode tax havens' traditional attractions for non-resident investors: secrecy and light regulation.Currently the pace of change has slowed enough to make a preliminary assessment of what impact these changes have had on the 'offshore world'as a whole, not just individual tax havens. Conventional wisdom, often supported by those in tax havens themselves, is that as tax havens' traditional attractions have been weakened, this decade has and will continue to be lean times.

However, there is some evidence that the pessimism concerning the future of OFCs is considerably overdone. This paper will provide a preliminary assessment of the future of offshoreusing recently published IMF studies of 42 OFCs, interview data from 15 such jurisdictions, and a ten year survey of the commercial investment press, to lay the foundations for a larger project along the same lines.