Bummed About Your 15 Percent Tax Rate, Job Creators? Have You Considered Paying 'Zero' Instead?

It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that we have not significantly appeased our lords and masters the job creators and so they have taken to laundering their money, investing theirmoneyspeech in offshore tax havens. Some of the world’smoney launderersbiggest banks, in fact, have been quietly helping 100,000 of our finest job creators and their families hide somewhere between $21 and $32 trillion in assets offshore in places like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The good news, however, is that this isn’t really anything that you people need to worry about. After all, being as you’re a Poor, you’re not as educated and wouldn’t understand that this is just how the system works, is all! These are swashbuckling captains of industry, taking such RISKS for the betterment of the economy and for us all, surely they deserve toevadeavoid a little taxes here and there as repayment for their fulfilling their patriotic duty ofbeing richcreating jobs? It's as AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE!

 Via Al Jazeera English :

Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280bn in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday.

The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts - excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses - puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion.

This amounts to roughly the US and Japanese GDP combined. Roughly 10 million people worldwide have offshore accounts, with 100,000 people owning half of those secreted assets.

The research was carried out for pressure group Tax Justice Network, which campaigns against tax havens, by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co.

John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network told Al Jazeera that he was shocked by "the sheer scale of the figures".

"What's shocking is that some of the world's biggest banks are up to their eyeballs in helping their clients evade taxes and shift their wealth offshore," said Christensen."We're talking about very big, well-known brands - HSBC, Citigroup, Bank of America, UBS, Credit Suisse - some of the world's biggest banks are involved... and they do it knowing fully well that their clients, more often than not, are evading and avoiding taxes."

Much of this activity, Christensen added, was illegal.

Well your Wonkette is shocked, SHOCKED, to find that banks like HSBC , Bank of America , UBS , and Credit Suisse are engaging in illegal activity. So they’ve each been involved either in mortgage fraud, bond fraud, rate fixing, or securities fraud in the past two years; big deal. That could have happened to ANYONE. The big picture here is that this is all for the benefit of our social and economic superiors. It’ll trickle down eventually!

 [Al Jazeera]