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Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens Hardcover – April 12, 2011

4.1 out of 5 stars 83 customer reviews

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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (April 12, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0230105017
  • ISBN-13: 978-0230105010
  • Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1 x 9.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #278,273 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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By Z. Cohen on April 23, 2011
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Before I get into my review, I wanted to point out that for someone without a lot of financial knowledge, this could be a very difficult book to read. I have a college degree in accounting, did some graduate work in tax, and worked for one of the big four accounting firms for a year in their international tax consulting department. I quit working for them and left the field entirely after I realized in vague generalities what they were doing, which was one of the reasons I was so interested in this book. The international system Shaxson describes coincides perfectly with what I saw in the accounting firm I worked for, and some of the specific techniques he describes correspond exactly to the tax structures I used to see discussed in trainings and other meetings. Given that background, I found this book incredibly engrossing and informative, but if you have low financial literacy, you may have a tough time with it. However, it is incredibly well written, uses a minimum of jargon, and tries its hardest to break down complex tax and financial concepts into lay terms.

Treasure Islands does a really incredible job in shedding light on an arcane, complex international financial system that has evolved mainly over the past 100 years. Like most people, when I heard the term tax haven, I would think of a few rogue Caribbean islands who helped a few rich people and crime lords launder money or hide it from taxation. Shaxson turns that conception on its head. While the term tax haven sounds like it specifically refers to taxes, Shaxon defines it more broadly: "Tax havens can be loosely described as a jurisdiction that seeks to attract money by offering politically stable facilities to help people or business entities get around the laws, rules, and regulations of jurisdictions elsewhere.
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Format: Paperback
Shocking, a word that many reviewers have used, is a good one for this book. Terrifying might be another.

I am not an economist by a long shot but am lately reading books like this to understand what is going on.

Shaxson's book is basically about the modern structure of finance capitalism, and he suggests that the foundation stone of the edifice is the offshore system.

The basis of offshore banking is that a global corporation sidles up to some tiny country and offers it some nice little kickbacks in return for an agreement that they will have to pay little or no tax.

The corporation then presents its accounts in such a way as to make it look that all its profits are generated in Jersey, or the Cayman Islands or wherever it may be.

Hence we get headlines like the one the other day where Barclays Bank declared 11.6 billion pounds in profits and paid 113 million in tax.

According to Shaxson this would not be in the least out of the ordinary, more like normal for any really large company.

Because of this these companies grow like Topsy, and generate staggering wealth.

Additionally they venerate at the shrine of banking secrecy which means no-one can ever find out what is really going on with these guys.

Offshore banking started to mushroom around 1960 and although Shaxson doesn't quite say this, it sounds like when the Brits lost their empire they started to look for other ways of making a nuisance of themselves.

Under the influence of these companies, in the last thirty years many large countries especially Britain and the US have effectively deregulated their internal financial systems so that it is much easier for these large corporations to find more and more ways of dodging tax.
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Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This is a fairly decent look at a topic I had no real prior knowledge of- Tax avoidance schemes used by large corporations. While the very basics of this topic are described, which was very informative, what Shaxson failed to do is really get into the nitty gritty and really describe how these schemes work. Imagine if I described an engine as a place where well timed explosions controlled by a spark plug go off inside a metal block with exhaust gasses blowing out the tail pipe. You don't really see how the wheels actually start moving- and thats how I often felt reading this book.

Big claims were made about former colonies and developing countries being sucked dry by tax havens, but there were very few examples that were not really fleshed out enough. It often felt like the author was just putting a buckshot of facts on a wall, and leaving the reader to make the connections between the facts. The language was dry, yet somehow not informative- it was very difficult to get through certain sections of the book.

What I learned from this book, I could have learned in roughly 30 pages. The rest was a lot of quotes from officials on how bad things are, and lots of terms like "bamboozling" which I feel were unnecessary editorialization- show me the actual money trail, and I can decide who is the bamboozler/bamboozlee.

Personally I think this book could have used a bit of editing and more of a bottom-up approach. Walk me through how Apple gets away with paying an 8% (or whatever the number is) tax rate, then explain how others do the same thing, and I would have found the book a lot more compelling.
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