Tax evasion

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Tax evasion or avoidance is the legal or illegal avoidance of tax (definition of the French State, which includes tax evasion) by using the flaws of a State's tax system or by moving all or part of a property or activity to another country (often a tax haven) without the citizen concerned expatriating himself (it would then be a tax expatriation). Tax evasion is technically defined as all of the taxpayer's behaviour to reduce the amount of tax normally payable.

This concept contains an ambiguity: it can be reconciled with that of "tax fraud", sometimes also referred to as "tax evasion", although depending on the country of origin, host country and method used, tax evasion is generally legal, unlike fraud which is by definition illegal; Legal tax evasion is then synonymous with tax optimisation, lawful avoidance of tax (including staying in one's country, for example by exploiting tax niches) or, under US law, tax avoidance. Denis Healey wrote in The Economist that the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.

The term tax evasion must be used with caution, as it does not cover the same thing depending on the country: in France it is legal; in Canada it is illegal (it is equivalent to "tax evasion" in France).

Evaluation of the amounts involved and means of control

Any valuation of the amounts thus diverted from tax is delicate because it depends heavily on the assumptions of the assessor, in a often opaque context.

Worldwide
Tax evasion is likely almost as old as taxation, but it has been facilitated by globalization, the complexity of international finance, bank secrecy and digital advances. The OECD is officially concerned about this in the late 1990s: in 1998, an OECD report proposed a global definition of tax haven. In 2000, the OECD published a list of tax havens (see OECD non-cooperative tax havens). In 2002, the OECD noted a lack of standards for transparency and international exchange of information and committed to implementing standards that would allow jurisdictions to participate in a recently established Global Forum on Tax Transparency. This forum has been conducting an annual assessment of the issue since 2006. In 2005-2006, the OECD proposes international standards for updating accounting data, approved by all members of the World Forum, which nevertheless guarantee a .

In 2016, this global forum promotes exchanges along the lines of the 2002 Agreement on the Exchange of Information in Tax Matters) and discusses the upcoming end of bank secrecy and the strengthening of international cooperation