Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

Now what to do with this situation... There are too many tax havens out there (Suisse, Monaco, Channel islands, Luxemburg, Malta etc. - this is just good ol' europe). There will always be rich, powerful people no matter what system you come up with (sheep/wolf human nature responsible here). If you tax them too much, they will flee (ie Tina Turner) and you lose all the money for good. Those are clever people, having best financial advisors out there.

Heck, if I had hard earned/inherited millions or more, I wouldn't want to support some war efforts/failing eu social policies either. If feeling generous, you can always give back more directly ie by building some school, avoiding bureaucrats that eat away most of cash. YOu know, the richest man in the world style. There is a good reason why he didn't donate all his money to something existing, but managing investments by himself (maybe not exact description, but you get the point).

All in all, nothing new...

It would, if there was an actual will to "get some assholes" in the first place.

As reported by Private Eye several years ago, as soon as the current government got into power, several outstanding (and huge) tax-dodging cases were quietly settled, largely in favour of such dodgers. Once called on it, they reshuffled a couple of appointees and said it wouldn't happen again. I wouldn't be surprised to find the new bosses were told to put this list in the wrong drawer and accidentally forget about it entirely.

The previous government would have probably used the list for a fundraising round - if you can sell peerages, you might as well sell pardons. The next government will likely replace a few appointees here and there, and if pressed they will claim cases are too old to be efficiently investigated, it was all the previous guys' fault, etc etc.

If you think that you shouldn't be forced to pay taxes, why do you think that other laws should be enforced? If rich people steal from the state, why shouldn't poor people just take what they want from the rich?

If you avoid taxes, you are stealing from everybody.

Do you even understand the simple truth, that most of the times no law is broken in tax optimalizations? Only when it does, it gets highly publitized. Usually, tax systems are full of loopholes and accountants just need to be creative enough (and yes, they are...). Without breaking any specific law, by logic "what is not explicitly forbidden is allowed".

Personally, I do believe in minimal and fair taxation. If you have system where successful people have over 50% tax burden (quite common in progressive tax systems), you can expect many attempts to get away from it. Just human nature. Your textbook phrases won't help much, do they.

Just look at Switzerland itself - most democratic country in the world, one of the richest (and their wealth ain't based on banking secrecy - whole banking industry brings roughly 12% into GDP... tourism and high quality exports are primes here). Low personal and corporate taxation, and the country and system just works. Why cannot rest of europe work this way? How much tax evasion is within Switzerand? Almost none...

And don't get me started on Switzerland. I live there. I'm Swiss. We have massive tax evasion. We have special tax deals for foreign nationals living here.

Here in Zurich, where I live, the cantonal (state) finances are under huge strain because all the wealthy people live across the border in other cantons where the taxes are much lower, but commute into Zurich to work. So Zurich gets to pay for the infrastructure, for the poor who live here rather than across the border, etc.

So please don't talk about some imaginary Switzerland that supports your self-serving rhetoric.