Step 1. The country creates a law forbidding any financial interactions with "offshore" countries (list is populated manually by lawmakers) and also with companies working with such offshore companies (shell intermediaries) in "good" countries.
Step 2. Country forbids its citizens from owning any assets or be incorporated in the same "offshore" countries.
Step 3. Blanket ban of cryptotokens.
Step 4. Huge inheritance taxes.
Step 5. Incremental tax hikes for second and more houses/apartments owned. Restrictions for corporations owning a lot of residential properties and huge taxation.
Step 6. Ban or restrictions of airbnb-like activities to discourage parking money in the housing market.
Basically look where rich hide money go for that. When they switch tactics you follow.
Step 0. Big independent financial auditor structure, independent from law and judicial branched both (or almost independent). From experience - you can dismantle a lot billionaires even with existing laws, if only someone looked close enough and punished them. This is a huge problem in eastern europe for example.
Offshore is common term. Its collectively all those small countries which have minuscule corporate tax, zero financial rules and refusal to cooperate with big countries about financial tax evasion. Basically everyone from Ireland, Switzerland (sorry guys, just business) to Bahamas and Panama (and ban flags of convenience while we are at it). Definitely all countries refusing to disclose financial records for international law enforcement.
If I were planning such effort, I would propose do bans in waves, with multiyear intervals. E.g. ban of top10 worst offender countries - Cayman islands, British Virgin islands, Seychelles, etc. Then make a list of 10 next and warn them that they have 2-3 years to adjust or be banned too. Rinse and repeat.
I should have clarified - I don't propose to "ban" half the planet because they the not optimal with their laws or prosecution. Offshore usually means tax heavens, usually the tiny island countries with small native population and incredibly lax financial regulation or none at all. Those are the primary targets.
"Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier."
Laws could be passed to keep wealth from moving overseas without being taxed first.
"Another way is to simply lower the corporate tax rate, which would have the additional benefit of repatriating tons of money that is sitting offshore because of American tax rates."
This is the only way to stop tax evasion and a race to the bottom, with devastating consequences to people to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars lost per year.
The question is how to do this. The only way I see is unilateral action by the biggest markets: the EU and the US (plus Japan, Australia, NZ, Canada), to say "you cannot access our market if you stash your profits in a tax haven".
When taken together, it means that Americans are basically unable to ever leave American taxation. No other nation has the ability to restrict their citizens like Americans do while their citizens are abroad.
This is bad news if you want to own a company while living abroad (you can't unless it's American or you'll be double taxed), live in a lower taxed country, or renounce your citizenship if you make more than something like 139k a year.
Any tax applied to America's rich would not result in money leaving the country - it's no longer really possible.
I wholeheartedly support strong inheritance tax. Dynasties are bad things and create bad systems. The US is uniquely positioned to enforce it even if it means that citizens are basically serfs to their country.
"A crackdown on international evasion is difficult because it requires international co-ordination, but common sense tells us this would be by no means impossible. Effective legal instruments to prevent offshore tax evasion are incredibly simple and could be enacted overnight, as the United States has just shown with its crackdown on oligarchs linked to Putin’s regime. All you have to do is make it illegal for banks to enact transactions with territories that don’t comply with rules on tax transparency."
The intent of this law was to prevent wealthy individuals from avoiding taxes through offshore accounts. I'm sure there are dozens of threads on HN lamenting this very practice.
they're already doing it, so this isn't much of a 'what if'. the problem is that money is kept offshore and never spent, because it's at risk of getting taxed immediately upon repatriation.
> forbidding any financial interactions with "offshore" countries
And what do you think "offshore" means? This is TikTok levels of financial naivety
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