Switzerland Tops The Financial Secrecy Index

When the HSBC Swiss leaks story broke the big shock was that someone had produced evidence, not that one of Switzerland’s notoriously secretive banks had helped people evade taxes. We know that trillions are stashed away in tax havens around the world (the ICIJ estimates at least $7.6 trillion) as we are occasionally reminded whenever another corporation is accused of dodging taxes. But there’s no precise definition of what actually constitutes a tax haven, and according to researchers at the Center for Global Development that ambiguity is a serious impediment to reform.

“The imprecision of the term tax haven […] not only allowed questionable pressure on a group of typically small, politically isolated jurisdictions, but it has also underpinned...