Tax haven
Rank Country/Territory Type
1 Qatar Oil & Gas
- Macau Tax haven ( Sink OFC )
2 Luxembourg Top 10 Tax haven ( Sink OFC )
3 Singapore Top 10 Tax haven ( Conduit OFC )
4 Brunei Oil & Gas
5 Ireland Top 10 Tax haven ( Conduit OFC )
6 Norway Oil & Gas
7 Kuwait Oil & Gas
8 United Arab Emirates Oil & Gas
9 Switzerland Top 10 Tax Haven ( Conduit OFC )
- Hong Kong Top 10 Tax Haven ( Sink OFC )
10 San Marino Tax haven ( Sink OFC )
11 United States 59,495‡
12 Saudi Arabia Oil & Gas
13 Netherlands Top 10 Tax Haven ( Conduit OFC )
14 Iceland 52,150‡
15 Bahrain Oil & Gas
A tax haven is defined as a country or place with very low effective rates of taxation for foreign investors (headline rates may be higher). In some traditional definitions, a tax haven also offers financial secrecy. However, while countries with high levels of secrecy but also high rates of taxation (e.g. the United States and Germany in the Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) rankings), can feature in some tax haven lists, they are not universally considered as tax havens. In contrast, countries with lower levels of secrecy but also low effective rates of taxation (e.g. Ireland in the FSI rankings), appear in most . The consensus around effective tax rates has led academics to note that the term tax haven and offshore financial centre are almost synonymous. Traditional tax havens, like Jersey, are open about zero rates of taxation, but as a consequence have limited bilateral tax treaties. Modern corporate tax havens have non-zero headline rates of taxation and high levels of OECD-compliance, and thus have large networks of bilateral tax treaties. However, their base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) tools enable corporates to achieve effective tax rates closer to zero, not just in the haven but in all countries with which the haven has tax treaties; putting them on tax haven lists. According to modern studies, the include corporate-focused havens like the Netherlands, Singapore, Ireland and the U.K., while Luxembourg, Hong Kong, the Caribbean (the Caymans, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands) and Switzerland feature as both major traditional tax havens and major corporate tax havens. Corporate tax havens often serve as conduits to traditional tax havens.