A new leak under the name of Pandora Papers has once again unleashed a storm of public opinion by revealing more than 27,000 offshore or opaque companies and almost 30,000 of their beneficiaries. This investigation once again reveals how multinationals and billionaires use engineering and tax havens to evade and avoid their tax obligations. These two cases are not isolated or circumstantial: they involve a structural phenomenon of the liquid capitalism of our time, deeply linked to the neoliberal offensive that has been sweeping our economies for decades. They are not rotten apples: they are thieves who plunder the common apple trees but refuse to contribute to their collective cultivation.
The Pandora Papers reveal the need to act decisively against this black hole that tax evasion and tax avoidance have become, feeding on democracy and equity. Thus, the fight against tax evaders, facilitators, and tax hideouts should be today a central element against inequality and for democracy. Chile is passing through an extraordinary political moment and a great opportunity for the constituent process to shield rights, but also to constitutionalize an equitable, redistributive, and progressive tax policy that allows paying these rights.
From different countries, institutions, and citizen platforms, concrete measures have been implemented to fight tax evasion and tax hideouts to inspire the Chilean constituent process to become an international example of the struggle for equity, banishing the neoliberal logic of the tax crisis of the states. Measures providing that no public representative may have accounts abroad or offshore companies. No company contracted by institutions and with public money may have subsidiaries or accounts in tax havens, apply accounting regulations that oblige multinationals to present relevant economic information structured by their business base and real activity per country, be taxed in each territory based on the presence of personnel, physical capital and effective profits extracted therein, avoiding abuse in transfer pricing.
