{"id":17102,"date":"2010-08-05T07:43:04","date_gmt":"2010-08-05T11:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/?p=17102"},"modified":"2010-08-05T07:54:57","modified_gmt":"2010-08-05T11:54:57","slug":"cayman-finance-open-letter-to-senator-levin-on-hedge-fund-tax-jurisdiction-falsehoods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/08\/2010\/cayman-finance-open-letter-to-senator-levin-on-hedge-fund-tax-jurisdiction-falsehoods.html","title":{"rendered":"Cayman Finance &#8220;Open Letter to Senator Levin&#8221; On Hedge Fund Tax Jurisdiction Falsehoods"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New York (HedgeCo.net) &#8211; The  financial services industry in the Cayman Islands rejects false claims  by a U.S. business group, &#8220;Business and Investors against Tax Haven  Abuse.&#8221;  That U.S. business group recently claimed that low or no-tax  jurisdictions hurt the U.S. economy because they encourage tax evasion.  &#8220;The deliberate misrepresentation of lawful tax structuring as illegal  tax evasion should be a source of real concern to the U.S. Congress and  the public it represents,&#8221; Cayman Finance chairman Anthony Travers said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/large_20080616-barack-obama-sen-carl-levin-michigan-flint-talk.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-17105\" title=\"Obama\/Levin 2008\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/large_20080616-barack-obama-sen-carl-levin-michigan-flint-talk-300x292.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"292\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/large_20080616-barack-obama-sen-carl-levin-michigan-flint-talk-300x292.jpg 300w, https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/large_20080616-barack-obama-sen-carl-levin-michigan-flint-talk.jpg 319w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>The U.S. business group is endorsed by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI).   Sen. Levin was a co-author (along with then-Sen. Barack Obama) of the  &#8220;Stop Tax Haven Abuse&#8221; bill, which was supplanted by disclosure  legislation in what became the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment  (&#8220;HIRE&#8221;) Act. &#8220;This mischaracterisation is not only grossly misleading  in describing the proper function of the offshore financial centre and  the benefits it confers on the United States, but forms a wholly unsound  basis on which to formulate United States tax policy,&#8221; Travers said.<\/p>\n<p>The Cayman Finance response, addressed to Senator Levin and printed  as an &#8216;open letter&#8217; in Washington, D.C. newspaper Politico, details  Cayman&#8217;s impressive compliance with international regulation and  transparency legislation and spells out Cayman&#8217;s full income tax  transparency agreement with the United States. The International  Monetary Fund and the Financial Action Task Force reports demonstrate  that Cayman&#8217;s all crimes anti-money laundering regime is amongst the  very best in the world; Cayman&#8217;s IOSCO membership ensures proactive  regulator-to-regulator disclosure.<\/p>\n<p>Chairman Travers explained the reasoning behind the Cayman Finance  response:  &#8220;These claims promote the falsehood that U.S. companies which  rely on legitimate provisions of the U.S. tax code are in some way  engaged in tax evasion, which is illegal and completely off the table in  the Cayman Islands. This particular falsehood completely misses the  point that the U.S. is the major recipient of the capital flows from of  the Cayman Islands. That capital provides the liquidity that is  essential to the recuperation and ongoing health of the US economy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The laws cited by the U.S. business group are U.S. laws, and that  all Cayman Islands companies are required to operate on the basis of  full tax and anti-money laundering transparency under Cayman law and  under existing treaties with the U.S. and many other G20 jurisdictions,&#8221;  Travers said. &#8220;It need hardly be said that profits generated in the  U.S. by Cayman entities are taxed in the U.S.,&#8221; added Travers.<\/p>\n<p>The claim that low or no-tax jurisdictions hurt the U.S. economy  through tax evasion does not take into account the tax transparency  treaties that are in place &#8211; nor does it reflect the growing body of  academic reports that suggest that international financial centres such  as Cayman are well-regulated, neutral jurisdictions that facilitate  cross-border business.  The Cayman Islands provides liquidity to markets  around the globe by increasing investment into developed nations such  as the United States as well as into developing economies, where project  financing is desperately needed to fuel job creation and alleviate  poverty.<\/p>\n<p>The open letter in Politico points out that changing the laws in the  U.S. to seek to apply U.S. tax extraterritorially to Cayman mutual and  hedge funds with U.S.-based fund managers will inevitably lead to those  fund managers relocating outside of the United States in search of  competitive returns which are not reduced by additional layers of  taxation.<\/p>\n<p>Editing by Alex Akesson<br \/>\nFor <a title=\"hedge funds\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\">HedgeCo.net<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:alex@hedgeco.net\">alex@hedgeco.net<\/a><br \/>\n<a title=\"hedge fund\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\">HedgeCo.Net<\/a> is a premier <a title=\"hedge fund database\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\">hedge fund database<\/a> and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership in <a title=\"hedge fund\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\">HedgeCo.net<\/a> is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for <a title=\"hedge fund\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\">Hedge Funds<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New York (HedgeCo.net) &#8211; The financial services industry in the Cayman Islands rejects false claims by a U.S. business group, &#8220;Business and Investors against Tax Haven Abuse.&#8221; That U.S. business group recently claimed that low or no-tax jurisdictions hurt the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16005,12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-developing-stories","category-hedge-fund-regulation","category-hedgeco-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17102"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17104,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17102\/revisions\/17104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}