Optimisation through offshore – between reality and legality

Abstract

The study highlights the complete image of the characteristics regarding offshore areas, by taking into account the perspective to deploy new measures of fiscal transparency. The importance of such areas stems from the fact that world economies lose important sums of money, every year by default of taxes. This happens as a consequence of corporative international abuse of fiscal evasion and the relocation of the profit made by big companies. The sums resulted from erosion of national taxation bases, from fiscal evasion and fraud and other infringements connected with fiscal evasion (are often being transferred to offshore companies so that their illegal characteristics gets lost and after that to be reintroduced into the economic cycle. The main characteristics of these offshore centres is lack of transparency and cooperation with foreign authorities, fiscal and banking secrecy being considered the guarantee of the offshore areas, measurable variables, fleshes in indicators that reflect the secret degree for each state. Therefore, fighting against such practicies through offshore societies aims at enforcing some measures to enlarge transparency and for the regions do not cooperate there is no granting of fiscal deductibility for transactions that entail the transfer of sums to the respective regions.

Keywords

• offshore companies
• transparency
• taxes
• fiscal evasion
• tax havens