Swiss Bank Accounts
Type
working paper
Date Issued
2011
Author(s)
Abstract
We examine the origin of deposits with Swiss banks on a country-by-country basis for the period 1987-2007. We relate the volume of Swiss bank deposits for 99 countries to the taxation of personal income as well as to political governance in these countries. Our results suggest that higher taxation in origin countries is not associated with a larger volume of deposits with Swiss banks. Our results do show however that countries with weak political governance, e.g. corruption, internal conflict, instable government, not only have a higher volume of deposits with Swiss banks but also a higher share of their total cross-border deposits in Switzerland. Looking at the impact of recent policy changes in Switzerland to counter tax evasion we find that the introduction of a withholding tax on deposits held by EU residents at Swiss banks in 2005 has had a significant impact. By contrast, the Swiss anti-money laundering act introduced in 1998 does not seem to have reduced the volume of Swiss bank accounts from countries with weak governance
Language
English
Keywords
Offshore banking
Tax evasion
Political governance
Anti-money laundering
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
119582
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BDS_2011_05_18.pdf
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