The central thesis of this article is that the ability to raise taxes has always been dependant upon taxing authorities having access to information about the affairs of their taxpayers and that recent developments in extracting information from tax havens has put taxing authorities in an unprecedentedly strong position to successfully tax cross-border transactions.
I will trace a short history of tax havens, demonstrate how they have operated in the modern era with such effect and describe the response of the developed nations to what they saw as a serious threat to their revenue base. Finally, I will look at the result of these developments and what it means for cross-border...
