If there’s a scourge of our times it is the industrial-scale use of tax havens by multinationals and the wealthy to ensure they pay little or no tax, this being a prime contributor to growing global economic inequality.
It is good then that the way in which the superrich use havens to hide their wealth and not pay their share of taxes, particularly in the developing world where the money could be put to good use, has been exposed in the form of a popular Netflix movie,The movie, with an all-star cast including Meryl Streep, is based on the Panama Papers, a data leak in April 2016 of about 11.5-million documents from more than 200 000 offshore entities, which exposed the offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca.
“That’s a global issue but particularly feels like something we see in the United States a lot, these big corporations avoiding tax at any cost.”was intent on exposing malpractice in international financial flows, the internet entertainment service is equally guilty of such practice, according to Tax Watch, a nonprofit based in the United Kingdom.
“However, recent years have seen the company’s profits rocket, from $123m in 2015, to $1.2bn in 2018,” Tax Watch said. Its analysis of Netflix’s 2018 financials showed that of its $1.2-billion in global profit, up to $430-million moved into tax havens. Netflix has not yet reported its 2019 financials.