Editorial: Who needs Panama: Iowa, Illinois cater to shell companies
The release of the "Panama Papers" exposed, like never before, the corrupt off-shore dealings that permit the world's rich and powerful to dodge taxes and funnel cash. But the names of Americans — citizens of the largest economy on the globe — were, so far, few and far between within the massive trove of information.
The dearth of American-owned offshore shell companies shouldn't be a shock, federal regulators and transparency advocates say. Iowa and Illinois are among the states that, through non-existent disclosure requirements, make the U.S. a tax-dodger's paradise.
It's the ultimate outcome of lax, secretive state laws in Nevada, Wyoming and Delaware that require little to no information of someone forming a limited liability corporation. An entire legal industry thrives in those states to file and manage LLC shell companies for anonymous stockholders. Iowa's LLC formation laws are nearly identical to those in the three poster-children -- Nevada, Wyoming and Delaware -- for sketchy, intentionally opaque LLC formation.
The problem, advocates and government officials often say, is that states such as Iowa and Illinois don't even require the names of the would-be corporation's stockholders.
http://qctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/editorial-who-needs-panama-iowa-illinois-cater-to-shell-companies/article_a3983696-4094-54de-a34f-7972d05cf3b9.html
