Bloomberg BNA Quotes Mark Matthews and Peter Barnes on Impact of Panama Papers

 Mark E. Matthews and Peter A. Barnes spoke with Bloomberg BNA concerning the millions of leak documents or "Panama Papers", which revealed  a web of offshore bank accounts. Mr. Matthews and Mr. Barnes discuss how the leaked documents will likely end tax secrecy and how BEPS will be impacted.  For the full article, please visit Bloomberg BNA's website (subscription required).

Excerpt taken from the article.

The notion that there's anywhere safe to hide your money, that's a thing of the past," said Mark Matthews of Caplin & Drysdale in Washington. "The notion that there is somewhere safe and secret in the world to hide your money is false. The answer to run and hide and move your money into the next country is a doomed exercise."

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Impact of BEPS

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"Nothing in the BEPS Action Plan will directly stop offshore tax evasion, if people are seeking to cheat," said Peter Barnes, a professor at Duke University School of Law and of counsel at Caplin & Drysdale Chartered. "But BEPS will make non-participating jurisdictions much more toxic than they are today."

Barnes said BEPS will "sharply narrow" the number of jurisdictions where companies or individuals can secretly park assets.

"If there are 20 offshore havens that participate in BEPS and five that do not, then it will be appropriate to assume that people with accounts in the non-participating jurisdictions are trying to hide something," he said.