Talk:List of offshore financial centres

Untitled
Gibraltar is no more an offshore centre since 30th June 2006. No new Exempt Company certificates are being issued from that time. All previous exempt certificates will be ineffective from 2010.

multiple sources/lists
It seems that we have territories from three different sources/lists now. Maybe we should make a table (or some notes/remarks) to be clear witch authority/source considers witch territory as a "offshore"? Alinor (talk) 07:33, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Others?
What's with the generic, weasel worded category "Others" in the table? Basically it may include any country on Earth, because someone somewhere said so. I'm from removing it. --ElfQrin (talk) 00:51, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The designation of an "offshore financial centre" is subjective enough as it is. The last thing this list needs is to pull in miscellaneous sources apart from the major international organizations. I have removed the category. Farolif (talk) 22:35, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

answer to first comment
Gibraltar YES it is a offshore financial centre, the iternational organizations say that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.41.8.141 (talk) 13:48, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Random dots not on list
On the map File:Offshore financial centers.png, there are two dots in the western U.S. and one in Alaska, but these are not explained in the article. I think the dot in the UK is in London, but this is also not explained. -- Beland (talk) 18:00, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

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Propose for deletion
Clearly, time and effort to make this article and well-formatted table. It was created in 2006 (probably just as IMF OFCs), but materially upgraded in 2013 by using the Francis Weyzig Tax Justice 2013 briefing article on OFCs, FSIs, and THs as a reference. The problem is that outside of the confines, and definitions/caveats, of that Tax Justice article, these lists are really "apples and oranges" lists, and not a "List of Offshore Financial Centres". They are outdated, and better lists now exist in the individual OFC, FSI, and TH articles.

For example:

1. An IMF offshore financial centre is a specific definition around the scale of foreign financial services activity versus local financial services.

2. The Financial Secrecy Index is not an OFC, but a very different definition around secrecy tools (e.g. the US and Germany are top 10 big FSI names but have never been listed as OFCs by anybody).

3. The OECD list are the 35 tax havens the OECD produced in 2000; however, the OECD would not list any OCED members as tax havens (the IMF and RSI did list OECD countries as OFCs/FSIs).

There are strong links between tax havens and OFCs (and FSIs), but because OECD refused to include any OECD countries on its list comparisons of the 2000 OCED list of tax havens with anything are misleading. The only OECD tax haven in 2017 is Trinidad and Tobago, whereas the IMF OFC lists have been verified several times.

Therefore, unfortunately, you could not really even use this article as an example of OFCs vs FSIs vs THs from 2013 (because of the OECD exclusion of OECD countries) - although, even then, the title of the article should be OFCs vs. FSIs. vs. THs (or something like that), and not a "List of Offshore Financial Centres".

The OFC, TH and FSI articles now have full lists that are up to date and annotated (and have comparisons, but if apples to apples). With regret, I suggest deleting this article as it can mislead/confuse readers on what they are seeing; they are better directed to these articles. Britishfinance (talk) 15:14, 6 September 2018 (UTC)


 * If the sublists are better then this could be made into a list of lists. Andrew D. (talk) 22:16, 7 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks Andrew. The different sub-lists are not comparable (you would not put them in a side-by-side table as now).  In other words, you would not create an article like this if it didn't exist.  You could create a list of OFCs, but that list already exists on the OFC wiki so why repeat it here (and same for FSIs and THs)?  In any event, if you think the article should not be deleted, then I think we will have to tag it that it is misleading in the meantime? (e.g. it is not a list of the proper 46 IMF OFCs)Britishfinance (talk) 22:29, 7 September 2018 (UTC)


 * We could change this page to be a re-direct to the Offshore Financial Centres page (which has the correct IMF lists of OFCs?)Britishfinance (talk) 08:47, 12 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Tried to clean this up, but realising that the OECD list is not even tax havens - it is a complete mis-interpritation of an OECD document. The OECD do not define or list OFC.  This article should be deleted in my view.  The correct lists are in the main wiki's on OFCs, FSIs and Tax Havens.  This article is just wrong. It should be wiped and the page kept but re-done as a re-direct to the offshore financial centre wiki (that has several official lists of OFCs).  Britishfinance (talk) 09:19, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Change to REDIRECT to "Offshore Financial Centre lists" in the "Offshore financial centre" wiki article
Having read this again to see if I could fix it, I think this is even worse than I even thought above:


 * The IMF list of OFCs is NOT the proper IMF list of OFCs (somebody just took them from an IMF report referring to financial centres).
 * The FSI list has nothing to do with OFCs, and the FSI wiki article has a full up to date list.
 * The OECD list is just wrong, and someone just misread an OECD report and interpreted them as OFCs (OECD does not define OFCs).

Therefore, my alternative suggestion to deletion is to blank and redirect (e.g. WP:BLANKANDREDIRECT), the page to the OFC lists section of the existing OFC wiki article (which is a correct and up to date list and also contains all the historical correct IMF-FSF OFC lists). At least if someone is directed to this page looking for a list of OFCS, they will ultimately get to a proper list of OFCs. Otherwise, I will have to re-propose that this page is deleted (it is just too misleading).

Britishfinance (talk) 16:30, 13 September 2018 (UTC)