Tax Justice Network: World's Elites Hide Trillions Offshore (7/23/12)

The Tax Prof Blog reports on the Tax Justice Network Study of the amount of offshoring among what readers of this blog often refer to as whales.  See World's Elite Hide $21-32 Trillion From Tax Man in Offshore Accounts (Tax Prof Blog 7/22/12), here.

The Tax Prof Blog quotes the following from the report:

At least $21 trillion of unreported private financial wealth was owned by wealthy individuals via tax havens at the end of 2010. This sum is equivalent to the size of the United States and Japanese economies combined. 

There may be as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets held offshore by high net worth individuals, according to our report The Price of Offshore Revisited, which is thought to be the most detailed and rigorous study ever made of financial assets held in offshore financial centres and secrecy structures. 

We consider these numbers to be conservative. This is only financial wealth and excludes a welter of real estate, yachts and other non--financial assets owned via offshore structures.
The research for the Tax Justice Network by former McKinsey & Co Chief Economist James Henry comes amid growing concerns about an enormous and growing gulf between rich and poor in countries around the globe. Accompanying this research is another study by TJN, entitled Inequality: You Don't Know the Half of It, which demonstrates that all studies of economic inequality to date have failed to account properly for this missing wealth. It concludes that inequality is far worse than we think.

The Tax Prof Blog links to a page on the Tax Justice web site here.  The Tax Prof Blog also has other links on the topic.  The TJN summary report is here.  
See also:

• Frederick E. Allen, Super Rich Hide $21 Trillion Offshore, Study Say (Forbes 7/21/22), here.

Readers of this blog will know that there is much concern that the IRS is disproportionately penalizing "minnows."  

I am reminded in this regard of the late Janet Spragens with whom I had the honor of serving with at DOJ Tax Appellate Section in the 1970s.  She was a tireless advocate for the taxpayer underdog, often chastising the IRS for going after the smaller taxpayer when there were bigger targets.  (As I recall, she characterized the IRS attitude as being "we have smaller fish to fry," but alas I could not confirm that as an actual quote by a quite Google search.)

Disclaimer:  While with DOJ Tax, I handled a case called Diamond v. Commissioner, 492 F.2d 286 (7th Cir. 1974), here.  That case applied a simple proposition of tax law -- recognized then and now (even if not applied).  Property received for services is taxable income -- either when it was received if it could be valued  at that point or when it could be valued under the open transaction doctrine (usually when some identifiable event occurred that would permit reasonable quantification, like taking the profits out of the partnership).  In a partnership setting, a partner who receives a partnership interest for services is taxable at ordinary income rates at the point of quantification.  Diamond was and, in my opinion, still is the law.  That simple proposition applied to the hedge fund, private equity fund and other industries claiming that profits interests for services is not ordinary income would have solved the problem and avoided the massive revenue raid, undoubtedly in the billions.  To be sure, the problem has complexities, but a smidgen of common sense could have solved that problem a long time ago.  But, as I said, he who has the gold makes the rules.  I would love for Judge Posner (Wikipedia entry here) to get ahold of that problem and reduce it to its essentials.  I can't imagine that, whichever way he ruled, his opinion would be more than a few pages with no footnotes.  (Note, of course, that if Judge Posner addressed the case, it would like be in the Seventh Circuit where Diamond is still the law.)