7 THE TAX POLICE
The Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) is a Parisbased
organization composed mostly of former tax collectors
from various industrial nations, and it is charged with expanding
the global powers of its membership, which comprises 30 democracies
that “work together to address the economic, social and governance
challenges of globalization as well as to exploit opportunities.”
In 1998, the OECD came out with a report entitled Harmful Tax
Competition in an aggressive move to thwart countries that promoted
the tax advantages of their jurisdictions over those of others—the lowtax
countries versus high-tax countries—and encourage them to raise
their taxes so they wouldn’t attract capital away from the big guys.
They promoted their argument as “fairness” between countries.
But it is merely a strategy by OECD member nations to eliminate
the loss of business and revenues as a result of their overtaxation. If
this so-called fairness is believable, then every country is guilty of
promoting their advantages over their neighbors, including the
OECD countries. Yet only the non-OECD members are the ones
being targeted.
In the United States, we call this type of scenario the “free market,”
or fair competition. And, ironically, although the United States at first
embraced the OECD’s underhanded methods, the government came to
the conclusion that to support the OECD’s cause would be detrimental
to the U.S. economy. Why? Because as mentioned, the United States is
actually the largest tax haven in the world, attracting trillions of taxadvantaged
foreign investment capital annually. Clearly, and understandably,
the United States supports the concept of tax havens. Just not
for anybody else.
The OECD has also tried to hoodwink those who would listen into
believing that having a more harmonized and balanced tax collection
system between countries would not hurt underdeveloped nations,
but the opposite is true. Indeed, the tax havens would suffer greatly as
there is very little other industry to support their economies.
International and centralized tax collection is the name of the
game. Taxpayers would be muscled into cooperation by the threat of
antidrug and anti-money-laundering legislation with stiff civil and
criminal penalties, which, in recent years, was touted as a means for
many countries to enforce their own tax collection schemes. Fighting
crime was the ploy dispensed to sell these pieces of legislation, just
like terrorism was the justification for passing the Patriot Act with its
comprehensive anti-money-laundering legislation and other oppressions
built into it.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is an intergovernmental
body whose stated purpose is the development and promotion of national
and international policies to combat money laundering and terrorist
financing. The FATF states that it is a “policy-making body”
created in 1989 that works to generate the necessary political will to
bring about legislative and regulatory reforms in these areas. It is the
anti-money-laundering wing of the OECD. The FATF has published
the “Forty Plus Nine Recommendations” to meet this objective.
As with other governmental and quasi-governmental agencies,
many have an agenda that is not revealed in their mission statement.
On the surface, their purpose appears even noble, such as “good versus
evil.” Here, that inspiring purpose is supposedly to eliminate
money-laundering and terrorist financing. Well, most of us would
agree that getting rid of crime is good, even critical. But at what point
can we allow overzealous bureaucrats to jeopardize the sovereignty of
our nation, and other nations, or force us to relinquish our individual
rights and sovereignty in return for advancing their agenda?
More laws are passed every day in the name of security, to protect
us from terrorists and criminals. Whom do we really need to be protected
from? As the philosopher Tacitus stated, “The more corrupt
the state, the more numerous the laws.”
The U.S. Constitution left criminal justice to the states. Only three
federal crimes were written into the original Constitution, but they
have increased exponentially in the past three decades. Today we have
over four thousand federal crimes. Here is where we need a clear distinction,
not broadly written legislation designed to criminalize everything
and anyone, based on the whim or need of the moment. The
inherent danger here occurs when this type of legislation is abused to
convict people of otherwise minor infringements, or no crime at all. Is
the purpose of the law to protect us from crime and criminals, or to
gain greater control over us, and the implied threat of us as citizens
and individuals? The question bears deeper examination.
These are the countries worldwide that have become members of
the Financial Action Task Force:
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) is an arm
of the U.S. Treasury, specifically created “to safeguard the financial
system from the abuses of financial crime, including terrorist financing,
money laundering, and other illicit activities.”
So, crime and terrorism were the justification for setting up FINCEN
in 1990, but one reason it exists is to go after your money. This
agency has been effective in financial crime investigations and is
linked to other government agencies. All the accumulated records required
by law to be filed since the passage of the Bank Secrecy Act in
1970 are computerized and available to other agencies and law enforcement,
including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense
Intelligence Agency. The FINCEN computer system can also probe
into all U.S. bank accounts.
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Canada
Denmark
European Commission
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Gulf Cooperation Council
Hong Kong
China
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Japan
Luxembourg
Mexico
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Portugal
Singapore
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States