CONSIDERATIONS ON THE DEFINITIONS OF TAX HAVENS AND OFFSHORE FINANCIAL CENTRES
CONSIDERATIONS ON THE DEFINITIONS OF TAX HAVENS AND OFFSHORE FINANCIAL CENTRES

Summary/Abstract: Before the economic crisis that debuted late 2007, offshore companies were well rated throughout the world being considered as a possibility to optimize taxation, and therefore increase profit in any developers business. Offshore companies are always present in either tax havens or offshore financial centre s, being created as a response to the markets demand of financial, corporate and commercial services. There is a fine line between tax havens and offshore financial centre s, line that is sometimes very difficult to define - therefore, quite often, these two concepts are mixed. Beyond the interest of doctrine studies, the delimitation of these two concepts arises interest in a practical matter: a tax haven is a country or a territory which chooses to implement a regulation designed to assist natural or legal persons to avoid tax obligations imposed upon them in the place where they undertake their real economic transactions, whereas an offshore financial centre is much more complex, being built upon a tax haven, and exploiting the structures created within, but incorporating many other services like accounting, law firms, banks and other associated trust companies. Therefore every tax haven aspires to become an offshore financial centre .

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