Sir, – For those of us with no great head for big numbers, last week's Irish Times was a challenge. How much, for instance, is $32 trillion, the figure cited in your excellent article on tax evasion? ("Secrets of the rich who hide their cash offshore", April 5h)
This is the phenomenal amount the article estimates to be circulating in a shadow economy resulting from tax dodging by multinational companies and rich individuals throughout the world.
The parasitic behaviour of global companies has furthered the enrichment of a few at the expense of the vast majority of the world’s citizens. Deliberate tax avoidance is robbing governments the world over of crucial revenue and is responsible for the impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people in developing countries.
We estimate that each year tax dodging deprives developing countries of $900 billion – a figure that dwarfs the $150 billion provided in global overseas aid annually.
Your newspaper has shed a hard light on these practices. The secrecy on which tax dodging relies must end. We must demand that the companies whose products we buy stop hiding behind misinformation in the name of profit maximisation. And our politicians must support EU efforts to improve international standards of corporate transparency.
We all have a responsibility to hold companies to account, and to end the web of secrecy that fuels global inequity. – Yours, etc,
HANS ZOMER,
Director, Dóchas,
Lower Baggot Street,
Dublin 2.