Gordon Barlow

https://www.caymancompass.com/2020/1...cation=picture
At the link is an item of interest from today's local newspaper. Gone are the days - it seems - when clients came here just to find out how best to dodge taxes in their home countries. Not just here (Cayman), of course, but all tax-havens. In fact they don't like being called tax-havens any more: we're "offshore financial centres", don't you know!

scot47

States everywhere need to raise taxes - even "tax havens" !

uk_grenada

Just be careful who you annoy on your island, after all MI5 and MI6 have just been given new powers by the British government, they are now allowed to legally break laws including murder and rape so long as they are chasing crime, fiscal or otherwise. These powers by the way are not just with the Secret Service they’ve also been extended to the vin ordinare police, HMRC, the financial conduct authority, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and maybe about 20 other government departments who can now rape and pillage with legal immunity in the pursuit of the tax dodger...

Gordon Barlow

Thanks for the warning, but I'm not too worried about the FCO and its agents. 30 years ago when our local politicians tried to run me off the Island (for my part in seeing off an attempt to introduce a local income-tax), it was the FCO that intervened and saved me.

Just to bring BE readers up to date... With our tourism industry utterly destroyed by the corona panic, our offshore business is providing (directly and indirectly) our government's only revenue these days. Of course the politicians are borrowing cartloads of money to finance their usual wicked extravagances, so we're expecting increases in the import-duty rate immediately after next May's election. That will add to the local cost of living.

Jamesy5008

Are we???? We're already the most expensive (give or take the odd battle with Bermuda) place on the planet!

uk_grenada

Clearly the previous poster has little experience of expensive islands,, here duty on a car is 160%, and it’s at least 40% on anything

Gordon Barlow

I'm afraid so, Jamesy. Where else are the pols going to get the money to pay our entire civil service? Not to mention our brand-new Army!

Jamesy5008

In the process of digging my tunnels as we speak. Cayman has served me well but $8.50 for a Guinness is too much!

uk_grenada

Here this week guinness is the biggest laugh. A local gay porn video was circulated involving a guinness bottle. At the end the guy puts the bottle in the case of returns. Pretty much killed it for their sales.... The joke is Grenada will no longer be trusted with the alcoholic version lol 😂

Gordon Barlow

The word on the street here is that the big accountancy firms are bringing in plenty of new employees from overseas. That implies that the offshore industry is booming, which puzzles me since weak economies in our client nations have historically reduced the need for our services.

uk_grenada

WInners and losers?

i have dealings with some of the webs biggest e-commerce platforms, they are seeing explosive growth in some sectors, 150-200% growth in online retailing in apparel for example. For sure I here are seismic shifts in business, for sure amazon gets richer but that’s tip of the iceberg stuff. It’s impacting everything. Take a look at Shein.com - an honest to god local Chinese but global retailer with serious intentions to crush huge competitors.

Gordon Barlow

Just FYI, here is the most recent report on Cayman's Global Citizens whatsit. Interesting to see so many down-votes on the report - all from anti-expats, is my guess!
https://www.caymancompass.com/2020/1...cation=picture

Gordon Barlow

I don't know if many BE members are interested in Cayman's tax-haven facilities - and I'm not 100% sure our moderators would approve of the topic. But this link might be of interest to some of you, especially the comments - which are almost always anonymous because of our government's censorship regime. Never mind: you will get the flavour of the local sentiment...
https://caymannewsservice.com/2020/1...sses/#comments

Gordon Barlow

And here's the latest news. I think they've under-stated it, at $400bn total. I would guess that Cayman's share alone is more than that. So is it immoral for people to minimise their taxes? Hmmm. It does prevent governments from accessing that money to buy bombs to kill civilians in faraway places; so there's that.
https://www.caymancompass.com/2020/1...ail&position=0

scot47

You mean Cayman does not have The Bomb ?