I fight to preserve tax competition, fiscal sovereignty, and financial privacy for the simple reason that politicians are less likely to impose destructive tax policy if they know that labor and capital can escape to jurisdictions with more responsible fiscal climates.
My opponents in this battle are high‐tax governments, statist international bureaucracies such as the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD), and left‐wing pressure groups, all of which want to impose some sort of global tax cartel—sort of an “OPEC for politicians.”
In my years of fighting this battle, I’ve has some strange experiences, most notably in 2008 when the OECD threatened to have me thrown in a Mexican jail for the supposed crime of standing in a public area of a hotel and advising representatives of low‐tax jurisdictions on how best to resist fiscal imperialism.
A few other bizarre episodes occurred in Barbados, back when I was first getting involved in the issue. Here’s a summary of that adventure.