Shell corporations and the Cayman Islands

Saw an interesting story in The Globe & Mail, which supposedly picked up a story from Bloomberg, about one small 5-story building housing the headquarters of 18,857 companies. For those that missed the news, the US government is attempting to crack down on what it perceives as tax dodgers.

The Cayman Island law firm [Maples and Calder], which provides services for the corporations that use its address, has incorporated more than 6,000 new companies over the past five years. In 2004, the building served as home to 12,748 companies using the same address in the Caymans, a British crown colony 240 kilometres south of Cuba.


Not sure what the impact of this will be. The article mentions companies such as Seagate, Altria, Coca-Cola, and Oracle but it's not clear how big their off-shore subsidiaries are. It's also not certain that Obama's bill will be passed since there is some resistance.

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