For Your Reflection

Tax Havens hold nearly one-third of the world's assets.

Now ask yourself: Do you personally know anyone with money in a tax haven? Who are these people? Isn't it amazing to think that many of us may never even rub shoulders with a class of people (1% of the world population) who monopolizes 1/3 of all the world's wealth?

The Tax Justice Network Report has listed some of the things we could purchased if this wealth were subject to taxation (quoted below):

• Fund Gordon Brown’s request for an additional US $50 billion a year in aid to the developing world over the next decade, in just two years;

• At US $30-40 per head, cover what the World Health Organisation classifies minimum financing needs for health services for every single person on the planet; and

• If US $255 billion had been given in aid every year from 2002, by the end of 2015, global poverty would be permanently eradicated, way beyond the goals of the international targets on halving global poverty by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals.