Global Financial Transparency and Offshore Wealth Accumulation

This paper uses administrative data to analyze wealth flows from Norway to offshore tax havens before and after a major improvement of global financial transparency: automatic exchange of bank account information between tax authorities. We present three results suggesting that the policy is a significant deterrent of offshore tax evasion: First, taxpayers who become wealthy are much less likely to shift wealth to offshore banks. Second, when wealth does flow to offshore banks, it is much less likely to reduce domestic tax payments. Third, there is no increase in the use of complex ownership structures for offshore wealth flows.