Wealth does not trickle down. It floods offshore in an amount roughly equal to the combined GDP of the United States and Japan, according to the new report The Price of Offshore Revisited
At least $21 trillion of unreported private financial wealth was owned by wealthy individuals via tax havens at the end of 2010. This sum is equivalent to the size of the United States and Japanese economies combined. The research comes amid growing concerns about the enormous gulf between rich and poor in countries around the globe.
There may be as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets held offshore by high net worth individuals (HNWIs), according to our report The Price of Offshore Revisited, which is thought to be the most detailed and rigorous study ever made of financial assets held in offshore financial centres and secrecy structures.Credit Suisse’s global wealth estimate for mid-year 2011 puts total global wealth at $231 trillion, including financial assets and non-financial assets (principally housing and land) at market value . Credit Suisse does not offer a figure for offshore holdings but the ratio of this $231 trillion figure to TJN’s $21-32 trillion figure headlined above is roughly 1:10, supporting our view that our new estimates are reasonable and conservative.