Tax avoidance and tax evasion

Studies and analyses on tax avoidance and tax evasion are legion, and the role of tax havens has been central too much of the research currently available. This chapter focuses primarily on the twenty-year programme of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), beginning with its Harmful Tax Competition project in the late 1990. Many of the tax havens have adopted a triumphalist stance upon being placed on the whitelist. In 2014, the OECD introduced its Common Reporting Standard in response to the earlier initiative of the United States in Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). The chapter assesses the OECD's initiatives and suggests that their augmentation by the inclusion of human rights norms. Human rights norms focusing on global standards of corporate governance which apply to the reporting entities themselves has the potential to be both beneficial and practicable. The idea of tax avoidance and tax evasion impacting human rights is indeed fairly self-evident.