Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says steps will be taken against tax havens, describing them as ‘freeloaders’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Germany will announce measures to crack down on international tax havens this week, as senior figures in German politics call on David Cameron to do more to close tax loopholes in British overseas territories.



The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, described tax havens as “the freeloaders of the international community” and said the government would unveil, in the coming days, “concrete steps” on how to fight tax evasion via shell companies.

“We need complete transparency worldwide,” Schäuble wrote in an op-ed in German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

Ministers from nearly 100 states have signed up to an agreement (paywall), first presented in Berlin in October 2014, to automatically share tax data. Under this, the signatories have committed to facilitating the collection and exchange of financial information on bank accounts and trusts from 2017.

What are the Panama Papers? A guide to history's biggest data leak Read more

Panama, which has been at the centre of the leak of financial data published in the Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung and other media organisations, has yet to sign up to the agreement.

Schäuble urged Panama to allow a tax agreement with Germany to be implemented. “A bilateral tax agreement between Germany and Panama was negotiated three years ago, but Panama has not signed it. I expect the Panamanian government to switch to the honest camp after these embarrassing revelations,” he wrote.

While the UK is a signatory to the Berlin transparency drive, many senior figures in German politics feel that offshore companies set up in British overseas territories are at the heart of the problem with international tax evasion.

Ralph Brinkhaus, a senior politician from the Christian Democratic Union party, told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag: “We’ll only be convincing on the international stage if we are, first of all, fully compliant in the EU, and for me, that includes Britain exerting influence over its overseas territories – we need to make that clear to the Brits in upcoming talks.”



George Osborne under pressure to publish tax returns Read more

Carsten Schneider, a budget expert for the Social Democratic party, the junior partner in Germany’s ruling coalition with the CDU, said Cameron needed to take action in the aftermath of the Panama Papers.

“If David Cameron still wants to be taken seriously personally and politically in the fight against tax fraud and tax evasion, Britain needs to close the loopholes in its own country immediately,” he told Welt am Sonntag.

More than half of the companies that Mossack Fonseca, the law firm behind the Panama Papers, acted for are registered in British-administered tax havens, as well as in the UK. Mossack denies any wrongdoing.