The top 15 tax havens around the world

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Tax havens are places where super-wealthy individuals keep money in offshore accounts for reasons that include, among others, tax avoidance.

These individuals often hold money within shell companies and anonymous entities in places like the Cayman Islands and other small, low-tax jurisdictions in remote locations.

CORPNET, an Amsterdam-based corporate research group, ranked the world's top tax havens based on how much more money comes into the country than how much should come in based on the size of its economy.

Most of the top tax havens are island nations like the British Virgin Islands, Samoa, and Malta.

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Tax havens are places where business people and other super-wealthy individuals keep money in offshore accounts for tax avoidance and other purposes.

Also known as offshore financial centers OFCs , these tax shelters are often small, low-tax jurisdictions in remote locations, like the Caribbean islands. In these places, wealthy individuals often hold money within shell companies and anonymous entities.

CORPNET, an Amsterdam-based research group that investigates global networks of corporate control, published a 2017 report in Scientific Reports ranking 24 offshore financial centers by their "sink" number, which indicates roughly how much more money comes into the country than how much should come in based on the size of its economy.

In the Cayman Islands, for example, 331 times more value sinks into the country than is proportionate to the size of its economy.

The European Union releases a tax haven "blacklist" first published in 2015 and continuously updated that calls out specific countries in order to improve global tax governance and fight tax fraud, evasion, and avoidance. The EU blacklist pressures nations to make changes and reforms to their tax codes, and blacklisted countries can face sanctions from the EU, according to OXFAM International.

Here are the world's 15 top hax havens, according to CORPNET.15. Seychelles

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Sink: 60

Once a colony of the United Kingdom, Seychelles is an archipelago of islands in the Indian Ocean that has about 2.5 times the area of Washington, DC.

The island nation made headlines in 2018 for being the setting of a mysterious alleged meeting between a Trump-linked private security entrepreneur, a Russian CEO, and a representative of the United Arab Emirates, which was investigated by Robert Mueller as part of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Seychelles was one of 30 countries blacklisted as a tax haven by the EU in 2015, but it was later moved to the "gray list" after making some tax reform commitments.

14. Cyprus

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Sink: 62

Cyprus, a Mediterranean island of about 1.2 million people south of Turkey, is investigating corruption charges related to its "golden passport" program, which gives citizenship to foreigners who invest at least 2.2 million in real estate or local business in the country.

13. Nauru

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Sink: 67

Nauru, a Pacific island northeast of Australia, is the world's smallest independent republic, with an area of about eight square miles and a population of under 10,000.

In 2001, the tiny island nation was internationally blacklisted amid concerns that it had become a center for money laundering, and it was among the countries blacklisted as a tax haven by the EU in 2015. The OECD upgraded Nauru's tax transparency standards in 2017.

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