The Panama Papers scandal may have cost the 28 member states of the EU in the order of €237 billion in tax income, the European Parliament posits in a new study. The estimates are based on research in a sample of eight member states (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom).
On the basis of a lower estimate (losses of €173 billion), assuming an average cost of €50,000 per employee, this would mean that 3.5 million jobs could have been supported if the forgone tax revenue had been put to use in job creation schemes, the Parliament argues.
Parliament's report states that in the Czech Republic, there is an estimated loss of €5.5 billion due to tax evasion alone each year (this does not include tax avoidance, a legal practice).
In Spain, the Gestha (a committee of tax administration experts and finance ministry representatives) estimated in 2015 that only a quarter of tax evasion cases were actually discovered by the authorities by means of controls and prevention (or around €15.5 billion a year).
The report therefore recommends, in addition to public registers of the beneficial owners of trusts and shell companies, that the process of drawing up a European blacklist of tax havens should be stripped of any political dimension. “The idea that only non-cooperative jurisdictions qualify as tax havens disregards the fact that some jurisdictions may only appear cooperative while remaining operatively a tax haven”, the report states. It calls for a grey list or a blacklist based on more nuanced criteria.
Lastly, Parliament reiterates its calls for horizontal protection for whistleblowers. The Commission has decided to show some flexibility on this point and is currently conducting a public consultation on the dossier. (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)