Cost of Tax Evasion Revealed as Campaign to Tackle Tax Havens Launches | Canadians for Tax Fairness

Huge Cost of Tax Evasion Revealed as Campaign to Tackle Tax Havens Launches
In Canada an estimated $81 billion a year is lost to tax evasion in the ‘shadow economy’ - that is half of our total healthcare spending. Canada ranks 11th out of the 145 countries surveyed in total amount of tax evaded.

Tax havens are a major part of the tax evasion problem – and these new findings come as the Tax Justice Network launches Tackle Tax Havens, a new campaign that highlights the critical role that these secretive states play in corrupting the global economy.

The issue of tax collection is rising fast up the political and social agenda, as countries across the world make deep cuts in public spending in ways that hurt the poor and the middle classes the most.

This new research demonstrates how important it is to tackle tax evasion and the tax havens that help wealthy individuals and corporations escape from contributing to the services that directly benefit them - from the health and education systems that support their workforces, to the roads that ship their goods to markets, to the courts of law that enforce their contracts or to the police who protect their property.

But tax havens are not just about tax: they cause colossal damage on many fronts. Tackle Tax Havens aims to inform the public about the offshore system and the problems it causes -- and to show what we can do about it.

Africa as a whole loses the equivalent of 98% of its total healthcare budget to tax evasion
119 of the 145 countries surveyed are losing over half of their healthcare budget to tax evasion
In 67 countries, tax evasion losses are larger than their entire health budgets
In Bolivia, tax evasion is more than four times as large as that oil rich country's health spending.
In Russia, it is more than three times the size
In Greece and Italy, where economic collapse currently looks possible, more than €1 in €4 is hidden in the shadow economy

More than $1 in every $6 earned in the world is not subject to tax because those earning it have deliberately ensured that their income is hidden from the world’s tax authorities