Tax havens alive and kicking as over 200 Danish companies are registered in tax havens
Thursday, 26 September 2013
Danish Ferry Company, BornholmerFærgen, luxury Gift Company, Georg
Jensen and Bianco Shoes, are example of Danish companies that are
registered in tax havens. They lead some more than 200 Danish companies
that have whole of part of their ownerships in various tax havens.
When caught they claimed that their aim has not been to save on taxes
but to wed off competitors from seeing their financial records. Experts
however, note that companies move to tax havens in order to avoid taxes
and resign that that it will of course cost Denmark dearly.
These are just three of the over 200 Danish companies identified as
having whole or part of their ownership in tax havens such as Bermuda,
Gibraltar and Guernsey, reports Demark TV referring to a mapping that a
fact finding site, Ugebrevet A4 did.
Guernsey, Channel Islands one of the chronic tax havens used by Danish companies /Granscole
Bianco Shoes has 140 stores in Denmark, Northern Europe, and the
Middle East. The shoe chain is driven from Kolding, in Denmark but in
reality it is owned by a shell company in Jersey, called Anka
Investments Ltd..
René Piper Laursen, who owns Bianco Shoes, wrote in an email to A4 that
Anka Investments is not a tax haven company because it is purely taxed
in Denmark and therefore taxed like any other Danish companies.
Entries in the Danish Tax Administration's list of Danish companies
shows that Bianco Shoes did not pay tax in Denmark in the last reported
fiscal year.
BornholmerFærgen, SamsøFærgen and a handful of other ferry routes under
that umbrella have Clipper Group as their majority shareholder. The
company resides in Copenhagen, but the parent company is located in the
Bahamas. Clipper states that it pays its taxes in Denmark.
"The only advantage for us is that our competitors can not gain insight
into our parent group's financial results, as we are not required to
publish financial statements for Clipper Group Ltd," explains Clipper
to A4.
Georg Jensen is owned by an investment fund based in Bahrain.
Financial experts state that the prime reason why the companies are
located in tax havens is tax avoidance, something that will hit Denmark
very hard.
The more money invested or goes to tax havens, the less money there is
to tax in Denmark. It is tax avoidance, which means that by legal and
illegal methods they reduce their incomes, according to Jan Pedersen, a
professor of tax law at Aarhus University, to A4.
The number of Danish companies with ownership in tax havens is actually
larger than the 200 named companies A4 mapped using global company data
from the Dutch research company Bureau van Dijk. One reason is that
some Danish companies' real owners are hiding behind multiple layers of
companies registered criss-cross national borders.
By Scancomark.com Team