N°. 7 - January 2011
CIAT Tax Thematic Series
I.2. Exports triangulation The triangulation we refer to is the one that occurs whenever in the export business transaction one or more international intermediaries appear between the domestic exporter and the final receiver located, most of the times, in tax havens. On the one hand, in this way, the transfer of title from one intermediary to another takes place through one or more international sales, the first one being the one from the domestic individual who will later report the export to customs. In spite of the subsequent international sales, goods do not leave the national territory. Finally, the last individual to get an invoice –the final purchaser- is the one who takes on the capacity of final receiver and the one who will receive the goods that were subject to a real rebilling chain. Whenever individuals who act between the local exporter and the effective receiver have not added any value neither to the product or to the marketing activity, there is no doubt that the purpose of the inclusion of these individuals within the transaction has the intention of undermining or avoiding the national tax base. If we add the inner characteristics of the above mentioned tax havens to this situation, the immediate consequence is the lack of transparency that covers this type of exports making it impossible for the National Tax Agency to know whether the intermediaries have performed an activity that should be compensated so that it is posible to assign some profitability to the intermediary in the tax haven. That is why given these conditions, we can answer the question we posed in the title: These exports triangulation cases can in no way be regarded as transparent transactions. Moreover, that lack of transparency and the differences found by means of international information exchange between the export price and the import price –which are really significant in some casesmake clear that the aforementioned differences in price are not due to a compensation solely for the intermediation. Collection of said exports through tax havens is as important as that and is also a cause for the lack of transparency, making evident the chance that some revenue generated by those export transactions remains hidden in those territories that do not support healthy fiscal competence.
Tax Evasion - Strategies and Mechanisms for Controlling Evasion
Carlos Sánchez
77