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148-476: The Panama Papers ( Spanish : Papeles de Panamá ) are 11.5 million leaked documents (or 2.6 terabytes of data) that were published beginning on April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, former Panamanian offshore law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca , and compiled with similar leaks into
296-502: A tax haven , such as Monaco , or by becoming perpetual travelers . They may also reduce their tax by moving to a country with lower tax rates. However, a small number of countries tax their citizens on their worldwide income regardless of where they reside. As of 2012 , only the United States and Eritrea have such a practice, whilst Finland, France, Hungary, Italy and Spain apply it in limited circumstances. In cases such as
444-416: A trustee or even a beneficiary and may thus lose control of the assets transferred and/or may be unable to benefit from them. Tax results depend on definitions of legal terms which are usually vague. For example, vagueness of the distinction between "business expenses" and "personal expenses" is of much concern for taxpayers and tax authorities. More generally, any term of tax law has a vague penumbra, and
592-468: A Brazilian lawyer. Estate planning is another example of legal tax avoidance . American film-maker Stanley Kubrick had an estimated personal worth of $ 20 million when he died in 1999, much of it invested in an 18th-century English manor he bought in 1978. He lived in that manor for the rest of his life, filming scenes from The Shining , Full Metal Jacket , and Eyes Wide Shut there as well. Three holding companies set up by Mossack Fonseca now own
740-571: A General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) statutes, which prohibit "aggressive" tax avoidance, have been passed in several countries and regions including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Norway, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. In addition, judicial doctrines have accomplished the similar purpose, notably in the United States through the "business purpose" and "economic substance" doctrines established in Gregory v. Helvering and in
888-407: A May 6, 2016, document, Doe cited income inequality as the reason for the action and said the documents were leaked "simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale of the injustices they described". Doe had never worked for any government or intelligence agency and expressed willingness to help prosecutors if granted immunity from prosecution. After SZ verified that
1036-591: A Spanish-based creole language called Chavacano developed in the southern Philippines. However, it is not mutually intelligible with Spanish. The number of Chavacano-speakers was estimated at 1.2 million in 1996. The local languages of the Philippines also retain significant Spanish influence, with many words derived from Mexican Spanish , owing to the administration of the islands by Spain through New Spain until 1821, until direct governance from Madrid afterwards to 1898. Tax avoidance Tax avoidance
1184-483: A U.S. citizen, without giving up one's citizenship), personal taxation may be legally avoided by the creation of a separate legal entity to which one's property is donated. The separate legal entity is often a company , trust , or foundation . These may also be located offshore, such as in the case of many private foundations . Assets are transferred to the new company or trust so that gains may be realized, or income earned, within this legal entity rather than earned by
1332-603: A considerable number of words from Arabic , as well as a minor influence from the Germanic Gothic language through the period of Visigoth rule in Iberia. In addition, many more words were borrowed from Latin through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. The loanwords were taken from both Classical Latin and Renaissance Latin , the form of Latin in use at that time. According to
1480-489: A criminal organization. In June 2024, a judge in Panama acquitted all former Mossack Fonseca employees, including the two founders, due to insufficient evidence and problems with the chain of custody of evidence. In addition to the much-covered business dealings of British prime minister David Cameron and Icelandic prime minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson , the leaked documents also contain identity information about
1628-522: A dramatic change in the pronunciation of its sibilant consonants , known in Spanish as the reajuste de las sibilantes , which resulted in the distinctive velar [x] pronunciation of the letter ⟨j⟩ and—in a large part of Spain—the characteristic interdental [θ] ("th-sound") for the letter ⟨z⟩ (and for ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ ). See History of Spanish (Modern development of
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#17327658896141776-482: A first language by Spaniards and educated Filipinos ( Ilustrados ). Despite a public education system set up by the colonial government, by the end of Spanish rule in 1898, only about 10% of the population had knowledge of Spanish, mostly those of Spanish descent or elite standing. Spanish continued to be official and used in Philippine literature and press during the early years of American administration after
1924-607: A food grower in Africa, processes its produce through three subsidiaries : X (in Africa), Y (in a tax haven , usually offshore financial centers ) and Z (in the United States). Now, Company X sells its product to Company Y at an artificially low price, resulting in a low profit and a low tax for Company X based in Africa. Company Y then sells the product to Company Z at an artificially high price, almost as high as
2072-727: A general anti-avoidance rule for the UK, which recommended that the UK should introduce such a rule, which was introduced in 2013. The rule prevents the reduction of tax by legal arrangements, where those arrangements are put in place purely to reduce tax, and would not otherwise be regarded as a reasonable course of action. Following the Panama Papers leak in 2016, Private Eye , The Guardian and other British media outlets noted that Edward Troup , who became executive chair of HM Revenue and Customs , had worked with Simmons & Simmons in 2004 representing corporate tax havens and opposed
2220-450: A jurisdiction whose banking infrastructure primarily provides services to people or businesses who do not live there, requires little or no disclosure of information when doing business, and offers low taxes. "The most obvious use of offshore financial centers is to avoid taxes", The Economist added. Oxfam blamed tax havens in its 2016 annual report on income inequality for much of the widening gap between rich and poor. "Tax havens are at
2368-415: A long history in the territory of the current-day United States dating back to the 16th century. In the wake of the 1848 Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty , hundreds of thousands of Spanish speakers became a minoritized community in the United States. The 20th century saw further massive growth of Spanish speakers in areas where they had been hitherto scarce. According to the 2020 census, over 60 million people of
2516-497: A number of project management considerations. Saying "my life is in danger," one anonymous "John Doe" insisted that reporters communicate over encrypted channels only and agree that they would never meet face-to-face. SZ also had concerns about security, not only for their source, the leaked documents, and their data, but also for the safety of some of their partners in the investigation living under corrupt regimes who might not want their money-handling practices made public. They stored
2664-508: A primarily Hassaniya Arabic -speaking territory, Spanish was officially spoken as the language of the colonial administration during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Today, Spanish is present in the partially-recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic as its secondary official language, and in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf ( Algeria ), where the Spanish language is still taught as
2812-416: A range of activities that are unfavourable to a state's tax system. According to Joseph Stiglitz (1986), there are three principles of tax avoidance: postponement of taxes, tax arbitrage across individuals facing different tax brackets, and tax arbitrage across income streams facing different tax treatment. Many tax avoidance devices include a combination of the three principles. The postponement of taxes
2960-450: A range of activities that intend to subvert a state's tax system. Forms of tax avoidance that use legal tax laws in ways not necessarily intended by the government are often criticized in the court of public opinion and by journalists . Many businesses pay little or no tax, and some experience a backlash when their tax avoidance becomes known to the public. Conversely, benefiting from tax laws in ways that were intended by governments
3108-443: A scheme to avoid VAT by forcing customers paying by card to unknowingly pay a 2.5% 'card transaction fee', though the total charged to the customer remained the same. Such schemes came to light after HMRC litigated against Debenhams over the scheme during 2005. Africa lost at least $ 50 million in taxes. This is more than the amount of foreign development aid. European companies operating in Africa are not all that different from
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#17327658896143256-541: A searchable database. The documents contain personal financial information about wealthy individuals and public officials that had previously been kept private. The publication of these documents made it possible to prosecute Jan Marsalek , who is a person of interest to a number of European governments due to his revealed links with Russian intelligence , and international financial fraudster Harald Joachim von der Goltz. While offshore business entities are legal (see Offshore Magic Circle ) , reporters found that some of
3404-617: A second language features characteristics involving the variability of the vowel system. While far from its heyday during the Spanish protectorate in Morocco , the Spanish language has some presence in northern Morocco , stemming for example from the availability of certain Spanish-language media. According to a 2012 survey by Morocco's Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (IRES), penetration of Spanish in Morocco reaches 4.6% of
3552-531: A second language, largely by Cuban educators. The number of Spanish speakers is unknown. Spanish is also an official language of the African Union . Spanish was an official language of the Philippines from the beginning of Spanish administration in 1565 to a constitutional change in 1973. During Spanish colonization , it was the language of government, trade, and education, and was spoken as
3700-494: A set of generic anti-avoidance rules, while SAAR targets a specific avoidance practice or technique. Also, there is a set of bilateral measures pursued thorough treaties or double taxation agreements (DTAAs), this can be done via various clauses. Courts around the world have played an important role in developing SAAR and GAAR measures. But the two guiding principles in judicial anti-avoidance are business purpose rule and substance over form rule. The business purpose rule states that
3848-741: A three-month period in June 2014. "This issue will surely be raised at the G20 summit," predicted Tomasz Kozlowski, Ambassador of the European Union (EU) to India. "We need to strengthen international cooperation for exchange of tax information between tax authorities". Panama, Vanuatu and Lebanon may find themselves on a list of uncooperative tax havens that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) re-activated in July 2016 at
3996-523: A total of 94 corporations faced a net liability of less than half the full 35% corporate tax rate and the corporations Lyondell Chemical , Texaco , Chevron , CSX , Tosco , PepsiCo , Owens & Minor , Pfizer , JP Morgan , Saks , Goodyear , Ryder , Enron , Colgate-Palmolive , Worldcom , Eaton , Weyerhaeuser , General Motors , El Paso Energy , Westpoint Stevens, MedPartners , Phillips Petroleum , McKesson and Northrop Grumman all had net negative tax liabilities. Additionally, this phenomenon
4144-427: A variety of tax loopholes. With this, the tax shelter industry boomed, giving rise to a demand for tax reform. The 1986 tax reform was the most accurate attempt at reducing tax avoidance, but then the next reforms of 1993 and 1997 opened new opportunities for tax avoidance and increased incentives of tax avoidance. The 1986 tax law reduced the demand for tax shelters and the opportunities for tax avoidance by constricting
4292-595: A well-known database attack vector , and that he had been able to access the customer database because of this. Computer security expert Chris Kubecka announced May 24, 2016, that the Mossack Fonseca client login portal was running four different government grade remote access trojans (RATs). Kubecka confirmed there were still numerous critical vulnerabilities, too many open ports into their infrastructure and internet access to their archive server due to weak security. Kubecka explained how each data security issue
4440-451: A year, almost two percent of their national income. Igor Angelini, head of Europol 's Financial Intelligence Group, said that shell companies "play an important role in large-scale money laundering activities" and that they are often a means to "transfer bribe money". Tax Justice Network concluded in a 2012 report that "designing commercial tax abuse schemes and turning a blind eye upon suspicious transactions have become an inherent part of
4588-416: Is cognate to the root word of satisfacer ("to satisfy"), and hecho ("made") is similarly cognate to the root word of satisfecho ("satisfied"). Compare the examples in the following table: Some consonant clusters of Latin also produced characteristically different results in these languages, as shown in the examples in the following table: In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish underwent
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4736-408: Is a huge amount of dirty money flowing into Miami that's disguised as investment," according to former congressional investigator Jack Blum . In Miami, 76% of condo owners pay cash (as opposed to using a mortgage), a practice considered a red flag for money-laundering, as of 2016. Analysis from Redfin in 2022 found that 31.9% of houses were purchased with cash across the 39 largest metropolitan areas in
4884-486: Is a potential source of tax avoidance. Tax shelters are investments that allow, and purport to allow, a reduction in one's income tax liability. Although things such as home ownership, pension plans, and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) can be broadly considered "tax shelters", insofar as funds in them are not taxed, provided that they are held within the Individual Retirement Account for
5032-523: Is actually collected) in that year of £33 billion. Figures published by the Tax Justice Network show that the UK had one of the lowest rates of tax losses due to profit shifting by multinational companies, with the fourth lowest rate out of 102 countries studied. According to the figures, the UK lost £1 billion from profit shifting, around 0.04% of its GDP, coming behind Botswana (0.02%), Ecuador (0.02%) and Sweden (0.004%). In 2008 it
5180-469: Is earned and again in the country of residence (and perhaps, for U.S. citizens, taxed yet again in the country of citizenship)—however, there are relatively few double-taxation treaties with countries regarded as tax havens. To avoid tax, it is usually not enough to simply move one's assets to a tax haven. One must also personally move to a tax haven (and, for U.S. citizens, renounce one's citizenship) to avoid tax. Without changing country of residence (or, if
5328-454: Is estimated that about 486 million people speak Spanish as a native language , making it the second most spoken language by number of native speakers . An additional 75 million speak Spanish as a second or foreign language , making it the fourth most spoken language in the world overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi with a total number of 538 million speakers. Spanish is also
5476-761: Is heavily influenced by Venezuelan Spanish. In addition to sharing most of its borders with Spanish-speaking countries, the creation of Mercosur in the early 1990s induced a favorable situation for the promotion of Spanish language teaching in Brazil . In 2005, the National Congress of Brazil approved a bill, signed into law by the President , making it mandatory for schools to offer Spanish as an alternative foreign language course in both public and private secondary schools in Brazil. In September 2016 this law
5624-655: Is part of the European Commission's agenda as an effort to implement a more effective corporate taxation in the European Union. This package was implemented in 2016 and offers measures to prevent aggressive tax planning and encourage of tax transparency among others. The Anti- Tax Avoidance Package counts with an Anti-Tax avoidance directive, recommendation on Tax Treaties, revised administrative cooperation directive and communication on external strategy. Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (ATAD) : On 20 June 2016
5772-732: Is related to Castile ( Castilla or archaically Castiella ), the kingdom where the language was originally spoken. The name Castile , in turn, is usually assumed to be derived from castillo ('castle'). In the Middle Ages , the language spoken in Castile was generically referred to as Romance and later also as Lengua vulgar . Later in the period, it gained geographical specification as Romance castellano ( romanz castellano , romanz de Castiella ), lenguaje de Castiella , and ultimately simply as castellano (noun). Different etymologies have been suggested for
5920-461: Is reported to remain in operation and is estimated to be costing the UK exchequer up to £20 million a year in corporation tax. In 2011, ActionAid reported that 25% of the FTSE 100 companies avoided taxation by locating their subsidiaries in tax havens. This increased to 98% when using the stricter US Congress definition of tax haven and bank secrecy jurisdictions. In 2016, it was reported in
6068-433: Is sometimes referred to as tax planning . The World Bank 's World Development Report 2019 on the future of work supports increased government efforts to curb tax avoidance as part of a new social contract focused on human capital investments and expanded social protection . "Tax mitigation", "tax aggressive", "aggressive tax avoidance" or "tax neutral" schemes generally refer to multiterritory schemes that fall into
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6216-791: Is spoken by very small communities in Angola due to Cuban influence from the Cold War and in South Sudan among South Sudanese natives that relocated to Cuba during the Sudanese wars and returned for their country's independence. Spanish is also spoken in the integral territories of Spain in Africa, namely the cities of Ceuta and Melilla and the Canary Islands , located in the Atlantic Ocean some 100 km (62 mi) off
6364-813: Is the de facto national language of the country, Spanish is often used in public services and notices at the federal and state levels. Spanish is also used in administration in the state of New Mexico . The language has a strong influence in major metropolitan areas such as those of Los Angeles , Miami , San Antonio , New York , San Francisco , Dallas , Tucson and Phoenix of the Arizona Sun Corridor , as well as more recently, Chicago , Las Vegas , Boston , Denver , Houston , Indianapolis , Philadelphia , Cleveland , Salt Lake City , Atlanta , Nashville , Orlando , Tampa , Raleigh and Baltimore-Washington, D.C. due to 20th- and 21st-century immigration. Although Spanish has no official recognition in
6512-475: Is the global professionalization of leaktivism. The days of WikiLeaks amateurism are over." WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson , an Icelandic investigative journalist who worked on Cablegate in 2010, said withholding some documents for a time does maximise the leak's impact, but called for full online publication of the Panama Papers eventually. A tweet from WikiLeaks criticized the decision of
6660-448: Is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxes. Tax avoidance should not be confused with tax evasion , which is illegal. Both tax evasion and tax avoidance can be viewed as forms of tax noncompliance , as they describe
6808-490: Is the present discounted value of postponed tax is much less than of a tax currently paid. Tax arbitrage across individuals facing different tax brackets or the same individual facing different marginal tax rates at different times is an effective method of reducing tax liabilities within a family. However, according to Stiglitz (1986), differential tax rates may also lead to transactions among individuals in different brackets leading to “tax induced transactions”. The last principle
6956-445: Is the tax arbitrage across income streams facing different tax treatment. An anti-avoidance measure is a rule that prevents the reduction of tax by legal arrangements, where those arrangements are put in place purely to reduce tax, and would not otherwise be regarded as a reasonable course of action. Two kind of anti-avoidance measures exist; General Anti Avoidance Rules (GAAR) and Specific Anti Avoidance Rules (SAAR). The GAAR implies
7104-511: The Private Eye current affairs magazine that four out of the FTSE top 10 companies paid no corporation tax at all. Tax avoidance by corporations came to national attention in 2012, when MPs singled out Google , Amazon.com and Starbucks for criticism. Following accusations that the three companies were diverting hundreds of millions of pounds in UK profits to secretive tax havens, there
7252-752: The Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich schemes. Up to 1,000 individuals in the same year were also discovered to be using K2 to avoid tax. Other UK active corporations mentioned in relation to tax avoidance in 2015, particularly the Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich and Bermuda Black Hole: Other corporations mentioned in relation to tax avoidance in later years have been Vodafone , AstraZeneca , SABMiller , GlaxoSmithKline and British American Tobacco . Tax avoidance has not always related to corporation tax. A number of companies including Tesco , Sainsbury's , WH Smith , Boots and Marks and Spencer used
7400-502: The ICIJ not to release everything for ethical reasons: "If you censor more than 99% of the documents you are engaged in 1% journalism by definition." The whistleblower reported that the murder of journalists Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 and Ján Kuciak in 2018 due to their investigations of the Panama Papers had deeply affected him and called upon the European Union to deliver justice. While offshore business entities are not illegal in
7548-568: The Spanish as a First Foreign Language (SAFFL) initiative in March 2005. Spanish has historically had a significant presence on the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba , Bonaire and Curaçao ( ABC Islands ) throughout the centuries and in present times. The majority of the populations of each island (especially Aruba) speaking Spanish at varying although often high degrees of fluency. The local language Papiamentu (Papiamento on Aruba)
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#17327658896147696-508: The Spanish–American War but was eventually replaced by English as the primary language of administration and education by the 1920s. Nevertheless, despite a significant decrease in influence and speakers, Spanish remained an official language of the Philippines upon independence in 1946, alongside English and Filipino , a standardized version of Tagalog . Spanish was briefly removed from official status in 1973 but reimplemented under
7844-794: The Tax Reform Act of 1986 the U.S. Congress introduced the limitation (under 26 U.S.C. § 469 ) on the deduction of passive losses and the use of passive activity tax credits. The 1986 Act also changed the "at risk" loss rules of 26 U.S.C. § 465 . Coupled with the hobby loss rules ( 26 U.S.C. § 183 ), the changes greatly reduced tax avoidance by taxpayers engaged in activities only to generate deductible losses. Fraudulent transfer pricing , sometimes called transfer mispricing , also known as transfer pricing manipulation , refers to trade between related parties at prices meant to manipulate markets or to deceive tax authorities. For example, if company A ,
7992-696: The Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe . Today, it is a global language with about 500 million native speakers, mainly in the Americas and Spain , and about 600 million when including second language speakers. Spanish is the official language of 20 countries , as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations . Spanish is the world's second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese ;
8140-608: The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo , a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile , in the 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the early modern period spurred the introduction of the language to overseas locations, most notably to
8288-656: The 1997 act, a gap between the rates at which capital gains and ordinary income was introduced to all taxpayers. During the 2001 and 2003 tax acts introduced more opportunities for tax avoidance because the gap between the capital gains and ordinary income tax remained the same as both rates were reduced by 5%. Finally, in the 2013 tax act, increased the tax on capital gains and ordinary income to 20 and 39.6% respectively. A company may choose to avoid taxes by establishing their company or subsidiaries in an offshore jurisdiction (see offshore company and offshore trust ). Individuals may also avoid tax by moving their tax residence to
8436-412: The 2014 Lux Leaks (4 GB), and the 3.3 GB Swiss Leaks of 2015. For comparison, the 2.6 TB of the Panama Papers equals approximately 2,660 GB. Mossack Fonseca notified its clients on April 1, 2016, that it had sustained an email hack. Mossack Fonseca also told news sources that the company had been hacked and always operated within the law. Data security experts noted, however, that
8584-404: The 2021–2022 school year alone. The local business process outsourcing industry has also helped boost the language's economic prospects. Today, while the actual number of proficient Spanish speakers is around 400,000, or under 0.5% of the population, a new generation of Spanish speakers in the Philippines has likewise emerged, though speaker estimates vary widely. Aside from standard Spanish,
8732-595: The 20th century, Spanish was introduced to Equatorial Guinea and the Western Sahara , and to areas of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem in New York City . For details on borrowed words and other external influences upon Spanish, see Influences on the Spanish language . Spanish is the primary language in 20 countries worldwide. As of 2023, it
8880-465: The Americas. As a Romance language, Spanish is a descendant of Latin. Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is Latin in origin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek. Alongside English and French , it is also one of the most taught foreign languages throughout the world. Spanish is well represented in the humanities and social sciences . Spanish is also the third most used language on
9028-527: The COVID-19 crisis, and the US federal government no longer participates in international corporate taxation agreements, single countries and trading zones are urged to implement fair taxation schemes for these Internet giants. Since the late 1990s, New Labour consulted on a "general anti-avoidance rule" (GAAR) for taxation, before deciding against the idea. By 2003, public interest in a GAAR surged as evidence of
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#17327658896149176-654: The Equatoguinean education system and is the primary language used in government and business. Whereas it is not the mother tongue of virtually any of its speakers, the vast majority of the population is proficient in Spanish. The Instituto Cervantes estimates that 87.7% of the population is fluent in Spanish. The proportion of proficient Spanish speakers in Equatorial Guinea exceeds the proportion of proficient speakers in other West and Central African nations of their respective colonial languages. Spanish
9324-576: The European Council adopted the Directive (EU) 2016/1164 which contains five legally binding anti-abuse measures that should be applied as common forms of aggressive tax legislations. The member States must have applied these measures as from 1 January 2019. ATAD contains the following five anti-abuse measures: 1. Interest deductibility, to discourage artificial debt arrangements which are design to minimise taxes, 2. Exit taxation, for preventing
9472-466: The GAAR in 1998. In January 2012 a review of the tax arrangements of people engaged on public sector appointments was undertaken, in order to "ascertain the extent of arrangements which could allow public sector appointees to minimise their tax payments" and make recommendations accordingly. The review was published on 23 May 2012, advising that: One historic example of tax avoidance still evident today
9620-620: The General Anti- Avoidance Rule (GAAR) adopted since 1981 with the Income Tax Act. The multinational anti-avoidance law (MAAL) is an extension of Australia's general anti-avoidance rules. This aims to make multinational enterprises pay their fair share of tax of the profits received and earned in Australia Since 1980s there have been six major tax reforms in the US. The first one, in 1981, introduced
9768-448: The IRS and pay American taxes for their entire lives, even if they never visit the United States. Most countries impose taxes on income earned or gains realized within that country regardless of the country of residence of the person or firm. Most countries have entered into bilateral double taxation treaties with many other countries to avoid taxing nonresidents twice—once where the income
9916-705: The Iberian Peninsula. These languages included Proto-Basque , Iberian , Lusitanian , Celtiberian and Gallaecian . The first documents to show traces of what is today regarded as the precursor of modern Spanish are from the 9th century. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era , the most important influences on the Spanish lexicon came from neighboring Romance languages — Mozarabic ( Andalusi Romance ), Navarro-Aragonese , Leonese , Catalan/Valencian , Portuguese , Galician , Occitan , and later, French and Italian . Spanish also borrowed
10064-426: The Mossack Fonseca shell corporations were used for illegal purposes, including fraud , tax evasion , and evading international sanctions . "John Doe", the whistleblower who leaked the documents to German journalist Bastian Obermayer from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung ( SZ ), remains anonymous, even to the journalists who worked on the investigation. "My life is in danger", the whistleblower told them. In
10212-540: The Old Spanish sibilants) for details. The Gramática de la lengua castellana , written in Salamanca in 1492 by Elio Antonio de Nebrija , was the first grammar written for a modern European language. According to a popular anecdote, when Nebrija presented it to Queen Isabella I , she asked him what was the use of such a work, and he answered that language is the instrument of empire. In his introduction to
10360-559: The Panama Papers investigation and more than 100,000 additional companies implicated in the 2013 Offshore Leaks investigation. Mossack Fonseca asked the ICIJ not to publish the leaked documents from its database. "We have sent a cease and desist letter," the company said in a statement. The sheer quantity of leaked data greatly exceeds the WikiLeaks Cablegate leak in 2010 (1.7 GB ), Offshore Leaks in 2013 (260 GB),
10508-543: The Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only español but also castellano (Castilian), the language from the Kingdom of Castile , contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician , Basque , Asturian , Catalan/Valencian , Aragonese , Occitan and other minor languages. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the official language of
10656-444: The U.S. According to Forbes magazine some citizens choose to give up their United States citizenship rather than be subject to the U.S. tax system ; but U.S. citizens who reside (or spend long periods of time) outside the U.S. may be able to exclude some salaried income earned overseas (but not other types of income unless specified in a bilateral tax treaty) from income in computing the U.S. federal income tax. The 2015 limit on
10804-502: The U.S. population were of Hispanic or Hispanic American by origin. In turn, 41.8 million people in the United States aged five or older speak Spanish at home, or about 13% of the population. Spanish predominates in the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico , where it is also an official language along with English. Spanish is by far the most common second language in the country, with over 50 million total speakers if non-native or second-language speakers are included. While English
10952-635: The UK regarding their use of the ' Double Irish ', Dutch Sandwich and Bermuda Black Hole tax avoidance schemes. Similarly, Amazon remains the subject of criticism across the UK and EU for its tax avoidance. In October 2017, the EU ordered Amazon to repay €250 million in illegal state aid to Luxembourg following a 'sweetheart deal' between Luxembourg and Amazon.com enabling the American company to artificially reduce its tax bill. PayPal , EBay , Microsoft , Twitter and Facebook have also been found to be using
11100-438: The UK tax collection agency, estimated that the overall cost of tax avoidance in the UK in 2016-17 was £1.7 billion, of which £0.7 billion was loss of income tax, National Insurance contributions and Capital Gains Tax. The rest came from loss of Corporation Tax, VAT and other direct taxes. This compares to the wider tax gap (the difference between the amount of tax that should, in theory, be collected by HMRC, against what
11248-688: The UK". Three quarters of Londoners under 35 cannot afford to buy a home. Andy Yan, an urban planning researcher and adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia , studied real estate sales in Vancouver—also thought to be affected by foreign purchasers—found that 18% of the transactions in Vancouver's most expensive neighborhoods were cash purchases, and 66% of the owners appeared to be Chinese nationals or recent arrivals from China. Calls for more data on foreign investors have been rejected by
11396-400: The US, taxation cannot be avoided by simply transferring assets or moving abroad. The United States is unlike almost all other countries in that its citizens and permanent residents are subject to U.S. federal income tax on their worldwide income even if they reside temporarily or permanently outside the United States. U.S. citizens therefore cannot avoid U.S. taxes simply by emigrating from
11544-535: The US. This is higher than the sub 25% cash purchase rate as seen during the purchase of the Panama papers. Real estate in London, where housing prices increased 50% from 2007 to 2016, also is frequently purchased by overseas investors. Donald Toon, head of Britain's National Crime Agency , said in 2015 that "the London property market has been skewed by laundered money. Prices are being artificially driven up by overseas criminals who want to sequester their assets here in
11692-475: The United Kingdom in Ramsay . The specifics may vary according to jurisdiction, but such rules invalidate tax avoidance that is technically legal but is not for a business purpose or is in violation of the spirit of the tax code. The term "avoidance" has also been used in the tax regulations of some jurisdictions to distinguish tax avoidance foreseen by the legislators from tax avoidance exploiting loopholes in
11840-717: The actions of US companies such as Google, Apple and Amazon do not pay enough taxes because of tax avoidance. According to the Independent Commission for International Corporate Tax Reform (ICRICT), the ‘GAFA’ (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) belong to the worst tax offenders worldwide. In 2018, Amazon was not charged any corporate taxes in the US for two years in a row, despite its doubling profits. Other multinationals, such as Apple for example, also exploit fiscal loopholes, diverting profits from high tax countries into others with lower corporate tax rates. As these large Internet companies disproportionally profit from
11988-457: The administration of Ferdinand Marcos two months later. It remained an official language until the ratification of the present constitution in 1987, in which it was re-designated as a voluntary and optional auxiliary language. Additionally, the constitution, in its Article XIV, stipulates that the Government shall provide the people of the Philippines with a Spanish-language translation of
12136-410: The amount that can be excluded is US$ 100,800. In addition, taxpayers can exclude or deduct certain foreign housing amounts. They may also be entitled to exclude from income the value of meals and lodging provided by their employer. Some American parents do not register their children's birth abroad with American authorities, because they do not want their children to be required to report all earnings to
12284-411: The avoidance of taxes when companies are re-locating assets, 3. Incorporation of the GAAR for disregarding of non-genuine arrangements, 4. Controlled Foreign Company Rule (CFC), to deter that the profit is transferred to a low or no tax country, 5. Switchover rule, to prevent double non-taxation. Australia has a strong tax regime regarding avoidance which applies to large corporate groups, underpinned by
12432-479: The blacklist. Countries that meet only one criterion would go on the greylist. In April 2016, if this greylist had been in place it would have included nine countries: Antigua and Barbuda , Bahrain , Brunei , Dominica , Liberia , Nauru , Samoa , Tobago and the United Arab Emirates . The ICIJ helped organize the research and document review once Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) realized the scale of
12580-503: The city of Koidu in Sierra Leone , and is $ 150 million in debt, even though its exports were more than twice that in an average month in the 2012–2015 period. Steinmetz himself has a personal worth of $ 6 billion. Other offshore shell company transactions described in the documents do seem to have broken exchange laws, violated trade sanctions or stemmed from political corruption, according to ICIJ reporters. For example: Named in
12728-684: The classic hispanus or hispanicus took the suffix -one from Vulgar Latin , as happened with other words such as bretón (Breton) or sajón (Saxon). Like the other Romance languages , the Spanish language evolved from Vulgar Latin , which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans during the Second Punic War , beginning in 210 BC. Several pre-Roman languages (also called Paleohispanic languages )—some distantly related to Latin as Indo-European languages , and some that are not related at all—were previously spoken in
12876-509: The company had not been encrypting its emails and furthermore seemed to have been running a three-year-old version of Drupal with several known vulnerabilities . According to James Sanders of TechRepublic , Drupal ran on the Apache 2.2.15 version from March 6, 2010, and worse, the Oracle fork of Apache, which by default allows users to view directory structure. The network architecture
13024-500: The consonant written b (a bilabial with plosive and fricative allophones). In modern Spanish, there is no difference between the pronunciation of orthographic b and v . Typical of Spanish (as also of neighboring Gascon extending as far north as the Gironde estuary , and found in a small area of Calabria ), attributed by some scholars to a Basque substratum was the mutation of Latin initial f into h- whenever it
13172-483: The core of a global system that allows large corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, "depriving governments, rich and poor, of the resources they need to provide vital public services and tackle rising inequality". International Monetary Fund (IMF) researchers estimated in July 2015 that profit shifting by multinational companies costs developing countries around US$ 213 billion
13320-404: The country's constitution. In recent years changing attitudes among non-Spanish speaking Filipinos have helped spur a revival of the language, and starting in 2009 Spanish was reintroduced as part of the basic education curriculum in a number of public high schools, becoming the largest foreign language program offered by the public school system, with over 7,000 students studying the language in
13468-459: The data in a room with limited physical access on air gapped computers that were never connected to the Internet. The Guardian also limited access to its journalists' project work area. To make it even harder to sabotage the computers or steal their drives, SZ journalists made them more tamper-evident by painting the screws holding the drives in place with glitter nail polish. Reporters sorted
13616-712: The documents include President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates, Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, King Salman of Saudi Arabia , and the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson . Former heads of state mentioned in the papers include: Spanish language Spanish ( español ) or Castilian ( castellano ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from
13764-487: The documents into a huge file structure containing a folder for each shell company, which held the associated emails, contracts, transcripts, and scanned documents Mossack Fonseca had generated while doing business with the company or administering it on a client's behalf. Some 4.8 million leaked files were emails, 3 million were database entries, 2.2 million PDFs , 1.2 million images, 320,000 text files, and 2242 files in other formats. Journalists indexed
13912-403: The documents using open software packages Apache Solr and Apache Tika , and accessed them by means of a custom interface built on top of Blacklight. Süddeutsche Zeitung reporters also used Nuix for this, which is proprietary software donated by an Australian company also named Nuix. Using Nuix, Süddeutsche Zeitung reporters performed optical character recognition (OCR) processing on
14060-484: The first news stories were published on April 3, 2016, along with 150 of the documents themselves. The project represents an important milestone in the use of data journalism software tools and mobile collaboration . The documents were dubbed the Panama Papers because of the country they were leaked from, but the Panamanian government, as well as other entities in Panama and elsewhere, expressed strong objections to
14208-683: The following table: Spanish is marked by palatalization of the Latin double consonants ( geminates ) nn and ll (thus Latin annum > Spanish año , and Latin anellum > Spanish anillo ). The consonant written u or v in Latin and pronounced [w] in Classical Latin had probably " fortified " to a bilabial fricative /β/ in Vulgar Latin. In early Spanish (but not in Catalan or Portuguese) it merged with
14356-466: The former British colony of Belize (known until 1973 as British Honduras ) where English is the sole official language, according to the 2022 census, 54% of the total population are able to speak the language. Due to its proximity to Spanish-speaking countries and small existing native Spanish speaking minority, Trinidad and Tobago has implemented Spanish language teaching into its education system. The Trinidadian and Tobagonian government launched
14504-425: The gap between regular rates and the minimum tax rates. Lowering the top marginal rates, restricting the ability to use losses on just one type of income for balancing gains on other income and finally by taxing capital gains with full rates. There was another tax act in 1993, in which the alternative minimum tax rates were increased, also the regular rates, and an increase in the absolute gap for upper-income people. In
14652-604: The grammar, dated 18 August 1492, Nebrija wrote that "... language was always the companion of empire." From the 16th century onwards, the language was taken to the Spanish-discovered America and the Spanish East Indies via Spanish colonization of America . Miguel de Cervantes , author of Don Quixote , is such a well-known reference in the world that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes ("the language of Cervantes"). In
14800-453: The grey area between common and well-accepted tax avoidance, such as purchasing municipal bonds in the United States, and tax evasion but are widely viewed as unethical, especially if they are involved in profit-shifting from high-tax to low-tax territories and territories recognised as tax havens. Since 1995, trillions of dollars have been transferred from OECD and developing countries into tax havens using these schemes. Laws known as
14948-470: The information, trying to connect people, roles, monetary flow, and structure legality. US banking and SEC expert David P. Weber assisted journalists in reviewing information from the Panama Papers. Additional stories were released based on this data, and the full list of companies was released in early May 2016. The ICIJ later announced the release on May 9, 2016, of a searchable database containing information on over 200,000 offshore entities implicated in
15096-450: The internet by number of users after English and Chinese and the second most used language by number of websites after English. Spanish is used as an official language by many international organizations , including the United Nations , European Union , Organization of American States , Union of South American Nations , Community of Latin American and Caribbean States , African Union , among others. In Spain and some other parts of
15244-446: The jurisdictions where they are registered, and often not illegal at all, reporters found that some Mossack Fonseca shell corporations seem to have been used for illegal purposes including fraud , kleptocracy , tax evasion and evading international sanctions . Reports from April 3 note the law firm's many connections to high-ranking political figures and their relatives, as well as celebrities and business figures. Among other things,
15392-486: The language's hegemony in an intensely centralising Spanish state were established from the 18th century onward. Other European territories in which it is also widely spoken include Gibraltar and Andorra . Spanish is also spoken by immigrant communities in other European countries, such as the United Kingdom , France , Italy , and Germany . Spanish is an official language of the European Union . Today,
15540-578: The law in China. In some of the world's hereditary dictatorships, the law may be on the side of the elite who use offshore companies to award oil contracts to themselves, or gold concessions to their children, however such dealings are sometimes prosecuted under international law. While no standard official definition exists, The Economist and the International Monetary Fund describe an offshore financial center , or tax haven , as
15688-518: The law such as like-kind exchanges . The US Supreme Court has stated, "The legal right of an individual to decrease the amount of what would otherwise be his taxes or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted". Tax evasion, on the other hand, is the general term for efforts by individuals, corporations, trusts and other entities to evade taxes by illegal means. Both tax evasion and some forms of tax avoidance can be viewed as forms of tax noncompliance , as they describe
15836-408: The leak were 12 current or former world leaders; 128 other public officials and politicians; and hundreds of celebrities, businessmen, and other wealthy individuals of over 200 countries. One notable case involved former Iceland Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson , who was found to possess a secret offshore account in a shell company called Wintris Inc., along with his wife. When Gunnlaugsson
15984-466: The leaked documents illustrate how wealthy individuals, including public officials, can keep personal financial information private. Initial reports identified five then-heads of state or government leaders from Argentina, Iceland, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and the United Arab Emirates as well as government officials, close relatives, and close associates of various heads of government of more than forty other countries. Names of then-current national leaders in
16132-694: The majority of the Spanish speakers live in Hispanic America . Nationally, Spanish is the official language—either de facto or de jure —of Argentina , Bolivia (co-official with 36 indigenous languages), Chile , Colombia , Costa Rica , Cuba , Dominican Republic , Ecuador , El Salvador , Guatemala , Honduras , Mexico (co-official with 63 indigenous languages), Nicaragua , Panama , Paraguay (co-official with Guaraní ), Peru (co-official with Quechua , Aymara , and "the other indigenous languages"), Puerto Rico (co-official with English), Uruguay , and Venezuela . Spanish language has
16280-404: The millions of scanned documents, converting the data they contained to searchable and machine-readable text. Most project reporters then used Neo4J and Linkurious to extract individual and corporate names from the documents for analysis, but some who had access to Nuix used it for this as well. Reporters cross-referenced the compiled lists of people against the processed documents, then analyzed
16428-402: The most explosive [leaks of inside information in history] in the nature of its revelations". "This is a unique opportunity to test the effectiveness of leaktivism ", said Micah White , co-founder of Occupy , "... the Panama Papers are being dissected via an unprecedented collaboration between hundreds of highly credible international journalists who have been working secretly for a year. This
16576-496: The name over concerns that it would tarnish the government's and country's image worldwide. Some media outlets covering the story have used the name "Mossack Fonseca papers". In October 2020, German authorities issued an international arrest warrant for the two founders of the law firm at the core of the tax evasion scandal exposed by the Panama Papers. Cologne prosecutors sought German-born Jürgen Mossack and Panamanian Ramón Fonseca on charges of accessory to tax evasion and forming
16724-429: The new taxes. The term tax avoidance indicates a situation in which a taxpayer legally minimizes the amount of his income tax owed. This circumstance occurs by declaring as many deductions and credits as permitted or prioritizing investments with tax advantages. An IRS report indicates that, in 2009, 1,470 individuals earning more than $ 1,000,000 annually faced a net tax liability of zero or less. Also, in 1998 alone,
16872-734: The northwest of the African mainland. The Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands traces its origins back to the Castilian conquest in the 15th century , and, in addition to a resemblance to Western Andalusian speech patterns, it also features strong influence from the Spanish varieties spoken in the Americas, which in turn have also been influenced historically by Canarian Spanish. The Spanish spoken in North Africa by native bilingual speakers of Arabic or Berber who also speak Spanish as
17020-419: The original owner. If assets are later transferred back to an individual, then capital gains taxes would apply on all profits. Also income tax would still be due on any salary or dividend drawn from the legal entity. For a settlor (creator of a trust) to avoid tax there may be restrictions on the type, purpose and beneficiaries of the trust. For example, the settlor of the trust may not be allowed to be
17168-654: The other hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. However, from 1713 to 1923, it called the language castellano . The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas (a language guide published by the Royal Spanish Academy) states that, although the Royal Spanish Academy prefers to use the term español in its publications when referring to the Spanish language, both terms— español and castellano —are regarded as synonymous and equally valid. The term castellano
17316-426: The passive losses (if any) of the partnership (i.e., losses generated by partnership operations in which the investor took no material active part) to offset the investors' income, lowering the amount of income tax that otherwise would be owed by the investor. These partnerships could be structured so that an investor in a high tax bracket could obtain a net economic benefit from partnership-generated passive losses. In
17464-520: The phrase daylight robbery) and led property owners to block up windows to avoid it. The tax was repealed in 1851. Other historic examples of tax avoidance were the deliberate destructions of roofs in Scotland to avoid substantial property taxes . The roof of Slains Castle was removed in 1925, and the building has deteriorated since. The owners of Fetteresso Castle (now restored) deliberately destroyed their roof after World War II in protest at
17612-533: The population. Many northern Moroccans have rudimentary knowledge of Spanish, with Spanish being particularly significant in areas adjacent to Ceuta and Melilla. Spanish also has a presence in the education system of the country (through either selected education centers implementing Spain's education system, primarily located in the North, or the availability of Spanish as foreign language subject in secondary education). In Western Sahara , formerly Spanish Sahara ,
17760-609: The property, and are in turn held by trusts set up for his children and grandchildren. Since Kubrick was an American living in Britain, without the trust his estate would have had to pay transfer taxes to both governments and possibly have been forced to sell the property to obtain the liquid assets to pay them. Kubrick is buried on the grounds along with one of his daughters, and the rest of his family still lives there. Other uses are more ambiguous. Chinese companies may incorporate offshore in order to raise foreign capital, normally against
17908-518: The provincial government. Chinese nationals accounted for 70% of 2014 Vancouver home sales for more than CA$ 3 million. On June 24, 2016 China CITIC Bank Corp filed suit in Canada against a Chinese citizen who borrowed CN¥ 50 million for his lumber business in China, but then withdrew roughly CA$ 7.5 million from the line of credit and left the country. He bought three houses in Vancouver and Surrey, British Columbia together valued at CA$ 7.3 million during
18056-551: The request of G20 nations, warned Le Monde , a French newspaper that participated in the investigation. Those three countries followed none of the OECD's three broad guidelines for international banking cooperation: The OECD , the G20 , or the European Union could also institute another list for countries that are inadequate in more than one area. Countries meeting none of these criteria, such as Panama, Vanuatu and Lebanon, would go on
18204-644: The required amount of time, the term "tax shelter" was originally used to describe primarily certain investments made in the form of limited partnerships, some of which were deemed by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to be abusive. The Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of Justice have recently teamed up to crack down on abusive tax shelters. In 2003 the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held hearings about tax shelters which are entitled U.S. tax shelter industry:
18352-409: The retail price at which Company Z would sell the final product in the U.S.. Company Z , as a result, would report a low profit and, therefore, a low tax. The African Union reports estimates that about 30% of Sub-Saharan Africa's GDP has been moved to tax havens . Solutions include corporate “country-by-country reporting” where corporations disclose activities in each country and thereby prohibit
18500-597: The role of accountants, lawyers, and financial professionals . Many of these tax shelters were designed and provided by accountants at the large American accounting firms. Examples of U.S. tax shelters include: Foreign Leveraged Investment Program (FLIP) and Offshore Portfolio Investment Strategy (OPIS). Both were devised by partners at the accounting firm, KPMG. These tax shelters were also known as "basis shifts" or "defective redemptions." Prior to 1987, passive investors in certain limited partnerships (such as oil exploration or real estate investment ventures) were allowed to use
18648-480: The scale of tax avoidance used by individuals in the financial and other sectors became apparent, though in its 2004 Budget the Labour Government announced a new "disclosure regime" as an alternative, whereby tax avoidance schemes would be required to be disclosed to the revenue departments. In December 2010, the new Coalition government commissioned a report which would consider whether there should be
18796-513: The shareholders and directors of 214,000 shell companies set up by Mossack Fonseca , as well as some of their financial transactions. Although it is generally not against the law to own an offshore shell company, reporters found that some of the shell corporations were used for illegal purposes, including fraud, tax evasion, and evading international sanctions. The journalists on the investigative team found business transactions by many important figures in world politics, sports, and art. While many of
18944-478: The statement did in fact come from the source for the Panama Papers, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) posted the full document on its website. SZ asked the ICIJ for help because of the amount of data involved. Journalists from 107 media organizations in 80 countries analyzed documents detailing the operations of the law firm. After more than a year of analysis,
19092-537: The term español (Spanish). According to the Royal Spanish Academy, español derives from the Occitan word espaignol and that, in turn, derives from the Vulgar Latin * hispaniolus ('of Hispania'). Hispania was the Roman name for the entire Iberian Peninsula . There are other hypotheses apart from the one suggested by the Royal Spanish Academy. Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal suggested that
19240-444: The theories of Ramón Menéndez Pidal , local sociolects of Vulgar Latin evolved into Spanish, in the north of Iberia, in an area centered in the city of Burgos , and this dialect was later brought to the city of Toledo , where the written standard of Spanish was first developed, in the 13th century. In this formative stage, Spanish developed a strongly differing variant from its close cousin, Leonese , and, according to some authors,
19388-584: The third most used language on the Internet , after English and Chinese. Spanish is the official language of Spain . Upon the emergence of the Castilian Crown as the dominant power in the Iberian Peninsula by the end of the Middle Ages, the Romance vernacular associated with this polity became increasingly used in instances of prestige and influence, and the distinction between "Castilian" and "Spanish" started to become blurred. Hard policies imposing
19536-411: The transaction must serve as a business purpose. Which means that mere tax advantage cannot be the main business purpose. On the other hand, the substance over form principle is wider than the business rule and it is defined by the OECD as the ‘prevalence of economic or social reality over the literal wording of legal provisions’ (Ostwal, T.P.; Vijayaraghavan, Vikram 2010). The Anti-Tax Avoidance Package
19684-438: The transactions were legal, since the data is incomplete, questions remain in many other cases; still others seem to clearly indicate ethical if not legal impropriety. Some disclosures – tax avoidance in very poor countries by very wealthy entities and individuals for example – led to questions on moral grounds. For example, the shell company Octea is registered to Beny Steinmetz and owes more than US$ 700,000 in property taxes to
19832-418: The use of tax havens where real economic activity occurs. According to a 2022 study, 36% of the profits of multinational firms are shifted to tax havens. If the profits had been reallocated to their domestic source, "domestic profits would increase by about 20% in high-tax European Union countries, 10% in the United States, and 5% in developing countries, while they would fall by 55% in tax havens." HMRC ,
19980-585: The whole of Spain, in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. "the other Spanish languages "). Article III reads as follows: El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. ... Las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas... Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. ... The other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities... The Royal Spanish Academy ( Real Academia Española ), on
20128-677: The work of bankers and accountants". Money-laundering affects the first world as well, since a favored shell company investment is real estate in Europe and North America. London, Miami, New York, Paris, Vancouver and San Francisco have all been affected. The practice of parking assets in luxury real estate has been frequently cited as fueling rocketing housing prices in Miami, where the Miami Association of Realtors said that cash sales accounted for 90% of new home sales in 2015. "There
20276-514: The work required to validate the authenticity of 2.6 terabytes of leaked data. The group enlisted reporters and resources from a variety of outlets including The Guardian , BBC , Le Monde , SonntagsZeitung , Falter , La Nación , German broadcasters NDR and WDR , and Austrian broadcaster ORF . Ultimately, "reporters at 100 news media outlets working in 25 languages had used the documents" to investigate individuals and organizations associated with Mossack Fonseca. Security factored into
20424-506: The world's fourth-most spoken language overall after English , Mandarin Chinese, and Hindustani ( Hindi - Urdu ); and the world's most widely spoken Romance language. The country with the largest population of native speakers is Mexico . Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance language group , in which the language is also known as Castilian ( castellano ). The group evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after
20572-474: Was also inherently insecure; the email and web servers were not segmented from the client database in any way. Some reports also suggest that some parts of the site may have been running WordPress with an out-of-date version of Slider Revolution, a plugin whose previously-announced vulnerabilities are well-documented. A grey hat hacker named 1×0123 announced April 12 that Mossack Fonseca's content management system had not been secured from SQL injection ,
20720-634: Was developed in the cities of Toledo , in the 13th to 16th centuries, and Madrid , from the 1570s. The development of the Spanish sound system from that of Vulgar Latin exhibits most of the changes that are typical of Western Romance languages , including lenition of intervocalic consonants (thus Latin vīta > Spanish vida ). The diphthongization of Latin stressed short e and o —which occurred in open syllables in French and Italian, but not at all in Catalan or Portuguese—is found in both open and closed syllables in Spanish, as shown in
20868-501: Was discovered in detail in a book titled Down the Rabbit Hole: An OSINT Journey . Gerard Ryle , director of the ICIJ, called the leak "probably the biggest blow the offshore world has ever taken because of the extent of the documents". Edward Snowden described the release in a Twitter message as the "biggest leak in the history of data journalism ". The ICIJ also said that the leak was "likely to be one of
21016-622: Was distinguished by a heavy Basque influence (see Iberian Romance languages ). This distinctive dialect spread to southern Spain with the advance of the Reconquista , and meanwhile gathered a sizable lexical influence from the Arabic of Al-Andalus , much of it indirectly, through the Romance Mozarabic dialects (some 4,000 Arabic -derived words, make up around 8% of the language today). The written standard for this new language
21164-794: Was elected in 2013, he had promised to be tougher on Iceland's foreign creditors. However, as revealed by the Panama Papers, Wintris Inc., which he and his wife owned stake in, was one of these creditors. This conflict of interest ultimately led to his resignation in 2016. Ninety-five per cent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes. Mossack Fonseca Individuals and entities may open offshore accounts for any number of reasons, some of which are legal. A Canadian lawyer based in Dubai noted, for example, that businesses might wish to avoid falling under Islamic inheritance jurisprudence if an owner dies. Businesses in some countries may wish to hold some of their funds in dollars also, said
21312-713: Was followed by a vowel that did not diphthongize. The h- , still preserved in spelling, is now silent in most varieties of the language, although in some Andalusian and Caribbean dialects, it is still aspirated in some words. Because of borrowings from Latin and neighboring Romance languages, there are many f -/ h - doublets in modern Spanish: Fernando and Hernando (both Spanish for "Ferdinand"), ferrero and herrero (both Spanish for "smith"), fierro and hierro (both Spanish for "iron"), and fondo and hondo (both words pertaining to depth in Spanish, though fondo means "bottom", while hondo means "deep"); additionally, hacer ("to make")
21460-498: Was reported by Private Eye that Tesco utilized offshore holding companies in Luxembourg and partnership agreements to reduce corporation tax liability by up to £50 million a year. Another scheme previously identified by Private Eye involved depositing £1 billion in a Swiss partnership, and then loaning out that money to overseas Tesco stores, so that profit can be transferred indirectly through interest payments. This scheme
21608-462: Was revoked by Michel Temer after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff . In many border towns and villages along Paraguay and Uruguay, a mixed language known as Portuñol is spoken. Equatorial Guinea is the only Spanish-speaking country located entirely in Africa, with the language introduced during the Spanish colonial period . Enshrined in the constitution as an official language (alongside French and Portuguese), Spanish features prominently in
21756-474: Was the payment of window tax . It was introduced in England and Wales in 1696 with the aim of imposing tax on the relative prosperity of individuals without the controversy of introducing an income tax . The bigger the house, the more windows it was likely to have, and the more tax the occupants would pay. Nevertheless, the tax was unpopular, because it was seen by some as a "tax on light" (allegedly leading to
21904-470: Was widespread outrage across the UK, followed by boycotts of products by Google, Amazon.com and Starbucks. Following the boycotts and damage to brand image, Starbucks promised to move its tax base from the Netherlands to London and to pay HMRC £20million, but executives from Amazon.com and Google defended their tax avoidance as being within the law. Google has remained the subject of criticism in
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