van Kommer, Victor --- "Cash economy, measuring the tax gap from the tax administrative perspective" [2013] ELECD 927; in Unger, Brigitte; van der Linde, Daan (eds), "Research Handbook on Money Laundering" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) 283

Book Title: Research Handbook on Money Laundering

Editor(s): Unger, Brigitte; van der Linde, Daan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857933997

Section: Chapter 22

Section Title: Cash economy, measuring the tax gap from the tax administrative perspective

Author(s): van Kommer, Victor

Number of pages: 10

Abstract/Description:

Lately, the US and the FATF have made a large effort to include tax evasion as a predicate crime for money laundering. Tax evasion in Europe is a predicate crime only in some countries, such as Greece, where the anti-money laundering (AML) policy concern is mainly to hunt out corruption and tax evasion, or in the Netherlands, where tax fraud is fought by a specific police-like authority, FIOD. Tax evasion is, however, not a predicate crime for money laundering in other countries, such as in Austria, where hunting drug dealers is the major concern of AML authorities. When it turned out that the German government had offered several million euros to a Liechtenstein bank employee for a list of potential German tax evaders holding an account in Liechtenstein (see the contribution of Prince Michael von and zu Liechtenstein in this volume, Chapter 11), it became quite clear that hunting tax evaders will become more important in the future. In particular, governments in need of financing their public debt will become more eager to hunt tax evaders, as the German government demonstrated.