> People will make all the obligatory jokes about shady rich tax dodgers, and there are rich people and corporations that like to keep money in Cayman for ethically questionable reasons, but the majority of Cayman finance is completely legal, ethical, and above-board.

This sounds like it might be true in terms of number of individual accounts maybe, but do you think that's true in terms of overall asset value?

It'd be hard to draw a line on what's sketchy and what's not. Taxes are incredibly complicated. Defining what's legitimate business vs. ethically questionable vs. illegal (and whose laws are being violated) makes it hard to even categorize the money, even if there were data available on how much is there and who controls it.

My guess is that there's probably much more there that's completely legal, but pushes people's buttons because they want to see it taxed at home. Like Apple's overseas billions (which are largely sheltered elsewhere, but you get the idea).

What is clear that the world governments are and have been accelerating their efforts to quash tax avoidance.

For example, in 2013 the oldest running Swiss bank, Wegelin, (itself older than the US) shut down as a result of a guilty plea for a case brought by the justice department.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swissbank-wegelin/swiss-b...