Hillary has gone after tax havens before. In 2004, as a New York senator, she vowed to close tax loopholes for "people who create a mailbox, or a drop, or send one person to sit on the beach in some island paradise and claim that it is their offshore headquarters." She introduced no bills to do so, however.
She has spoken out against corporate tax inversions, too. She wants Congress to prevent them by imposing what she calls a "commonsense 50%" threshold on them; in other words, as long as a company keeps at least half of its operations in this country, it would be considered a U.S. company for tax purposes, no matter the inversions. She also has favored an "exit tax" to ensure that multinationals pay a "fair" share of U.S. taxes owed on earnings stored overseas. Both of these suggestions would put some modest limits on offshore tax dodging (after the fact), but not come within a country mile of banning it.
On such subjects, she can sound strong indeed at appropriate moments. In February 2016, for instance, she said, "We need to go after a company like Johnson Controls that is trying to avoid paying taxes after all of us bailed it out by pretending to sell itself in a so-called inversion in Europe." It evidently didn't matter to her that the same automotive parts company set to merge with Tyco International (based in Ireland to dodge taxes) had donated money to the Clinton Foundation charity as recently as December 2015. (Johnson Controls denied Hillary's claims that it had received a bailout during the financial crisis.)
Hillary, lest we forget, joined the board of directors of the the Clinton Foundation, the family charity, in 2013. She resigned in April 2015 to run for president. Now, keeping it in the family, her husband, Bill, and her daughter, Chelsea, remain standing members of the board. Spawned from the William J. Clinton Foundation, founded in 1997, the charity has raised $2 billion, has about 2,000 employees (including at times members of Hillary's political team), and boasts an annual budget of $223 million.
Like many gilt-edged couples, Hillary and Bill Clinton have themselves utilized onshore and offshore tax loopholes. In 2010, they used a common tax-dodging technique by placing their multi-million dollar home in Chappaqua, New York, in a "residence trust." After he left office, Bill spent five years as an "adviser" to billionaire (now-ex-pal) Ron Burkle's investment fund, Yucaipa Global, which had funds registered in the Cayman Islands and Dubai. That alliance netted Bill at least $15 million.
Hillary's bedrock thinking on money flowing out of the U.S. and into the offshore world can best be seen in her support for the 2012 U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement when she was secretary of state. The agreement removed "barriers to U.S. services, including financial services," which actually simplified the process of squirreling money away in or through Panama by allowing it to flow freely into that country.
The Clinton Foundation inhales donations from people using tax havens (including Panama). Although Hillary denounced Mossack Fonseca's dealings on cue after the Panama Papers story broke, a number of individuals and multinationals that have contributed to the foundation used MF to establish offshore accounts, according to McClatchy. These include Canadian mining billionaire Frank Giustra who features in the foundation's $25 million top-tier donor bracket, and two firms tied to Ng Lap Seng, the Chinese billionaire implicated in a major donor scandal involving the Clintons and the Democratic National Committee.
Similarly, in a speech she gave at the New School in July 2015, Hillary highlighted the "criminal behavior" of global bank HSBC. In 2012, the behemoth financial institution agreed to a record $1.92 billion settlement with the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department for enabling drug cartel money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions by conducting transactions for customers in Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Burma. She vowed, "On my watch, it will change."
Yet, in 2014, the Clinton Foundation accepted between $500,000 and $1 million from that bank.
The Panama Papers are but one conflicted instance in which Hillary's stated beliefs, her actions, and the generosity of her friends and acquaintances came together in a contradictory fashion. The evidence suggests that tax-dodgers will, in fact, be able to breathe a sigh of relief if she becomes president. Her actions are likely to -- if you'll excuse the expression -- trump her words when it comes to curtailing the behavior of offshore scofflaws in significant ways. And speaking of Trump...
The Donald
Consider the fact that The Donald won't even disclose his tax returns. His indignantly delivered explanation is that they are "under audit." Under the circumstances, don't hold your breath. Perhaps he doesn't make nearly as much money as he claims -- or maybe he has an embarrassing tax haven habit. Who knows?
Ironically, Mossack Fonseca's Panama City headquarters is located a mere seven-minute drive from the Trump International Hotel and Towers in Panama City. (If you're interested, its website is pitching a bargain on rooms at "15% off our currently available Best Unrestricted Rate.") That decadent complex is one of many sketchy enterprises to which Trump lent his name for licensing purposes. According to his (unaudited) personal financial disclosure report filed with the Federal Election Commission, the deal earned him $5 million. In true Trumpian style, lawsuits and battles surround the endeavor.
Under the tax plan he's touting in his presidential campaign, U.S. businesses would see a reduction in their maximum tax rate from 35% to 15%. This lower rate ("one of the best in the world") would, he claims, render corporate inversions unnecessary. The Donald apparently hopes that corporate America will be so eternally grateful to him that they'll move their money back onshore and pay taxes on it voluntarily (though most of them already don't pay the top tax rate here anyway).
Trump's views on a "repatriation tax holiday" that would let companies bring home their overseas stashes on a one-time basis for little or nothing have shifted over the course of his candidacy. Last year, he proposed the repatriation of hidden funds without penalty or taxation of any kind. Now he's advocating a more populist one-time 10% tax on them.
Although a key promise of his tax reform plan is to end the practice of stockpiling money in offshore accounts by American companies, he has personally invested in many of the companies that do so. As CBS News noted, in October 2015, Trump owned stock in 22 of the top 30 Fortune 500 companies ranked by their number of offshore subsidiaries. It's a group that has engineered 1,225 tax-haven subsidiaries holding $1.4 trillion. Of course, Trump has a keen understanding of the practices that disguise or shelter money from taxes. As he explained to supporters in Iowa this January, when it comes to his own business enterprises, "I pay as little as possible. I use every single thing in the book."
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