Slashdot Mirror
Swiss Bank Secrecy Under Renewed Attack
Stanislav_J writes "All you wealthy Slashdotters better start making alternate arrangements for stashing your millions. Switzerland's storied role as discreet banker to the world's tax-avoiding wealthy is under threat like never before, and this time the country ultimately may not be able to stop the rest of the world from prying into those legendary 'secret' accounts, said to contain between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. A massive German tax-evasion scandal is putting pressure on the Swiss to cooperate, and the rest of Europe is also hardening their resolve to force change upon them. Per the article, 'The official Swiss reaction has been self-conscious detachment, which they hope will deflate the issue,' but even their own citizens are not too concerned about those outside their borders: 80% of Swiss support the banking confidentiality law, but that number drops into the 40s when it is applied to foreigners. Pressure is also coming from US pols — not the 'let's pry into everyone's business' Republicans, but the 'make the rich pay their fair share' Democrats, including Illinois Senator (and presidential candidate) Barack Obama."
In "Earth," by David Brin, there's actually a big campaign to uncover all those secret bank accounts, and the whole situation devolves into a war against Switzerland.
Do you honestly think Switzerland is implementing these privacy provisions to protect oppressed foreigners? Or do you think that they are doing it for their own profit?
We have two ethical issues that need to be resolved here. The first is the right to privacy of your income and assets from your government. The second is the motivation of Switzerland's bank privacy provisions.
In the first case you will need to argue that a person has a right to protect income and assets from their government. In my opinion, it is ethical for the government to be able to examine income and assets for taxation purposes. I base this on an argument of comparable moral values. However immoral it is to tax the rich at a higher rate than the poor is balanced out by two factors: (1) the rich created their wealth through a society that has good health, education, and infrastructure, and (2) the overtaxing of the rich causes a lower personal burden for them than equal taxing of much larger numbers of the poor and middle class. I'm not arguing for a massive redistribution of wealth, only that the poor and middle class have a chance at a decent quality of living and that there is a decent chance for an individual to change his or her social class.
Even if you don't agree with my argument for the first case, you will still have to sustain the morality of the second case. I would argue that their inflated GDP per capita (about 30% higher than their neighbors) is not based on superior government or natural resources but on their financial institutions which have gained an incredible competitive advantage due to their laws. I would also note that Switzerland taxes its rich much higher than they tax their middle class or poor which would undermine a Swiss moral argument against the first case.
"The only difference here is that Switzerland seems to have a banker/client confidentiality, which seems a bit strange to the rest of us to throw it in with doctors and lawyers. Even that may I believe is cracked open for criminal cases, just not for tax evasion in a foreign country (which I believe isn't illegal in Switzerland)."
I am swiss. Tax evasion is illegal in switzerland by law but the banking secret usually makes it impossible to track it down. Most swiss people have not much of a benefit about this banking secret. It's the foreigners with shitloads of money which profit (we won't see tax for their illegally stored money neither) but we get into loads of troubles in foreign affairs (politics).
It's still not understandable to me why a country has to protect a private industry by law to make breaking the law possible. the only ones which benefit from this are the banks. The ones which loose because of it are the people.
About damn time to get rid of this law.
kind regards,
-S