Center for Freedom and Prosperity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity (or CF&P) is a non-profit organisation created to lobby legislators in favour of market liberalisation, particularly with reference to tax competition. The priority objective of the CF&P is the Coalition for Tax Competition (or CTC), a movement which promotes jurisdictional tax competition, sovereignty, and financial privacy.

CF&P, and its affiliated Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (a tax-exempt educational organisation) publishes studies and conduct seminars analysing the benefits of jurisdictional tax competition, financial privacy and fiscal sovereignty. The Foundation seeks to produce analysis and reports on economic issues, and n the benefits of limited government, and its mission is to "educate voters on the need for competitive markets".

The stated objectives of the CTC are:

Thwarting the OECD's attempts to create a cartel of high-tax nations – arguing that tax competition should be celebrated, not persecuted, and advocating that high tax regimes should not be able to shield themselves from globalisation.
Protecting world commerce and open trade – it asserts that discriminatory financial protectionism against low-tax nations is a bad idea in principle and should be stopped.
Preserving the ability of sovereign jurisdictions to determine their own tax policy – they oppose high-tax nations trying to export their tax laws to other nations, in effect trying to turn them into adjunct tax collectors, and the OECD trying to dictate tax policy in low-tax jurisdictions.
Resisting the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) attempts to restrict financial privacy. Whilst the CTC states that it supports laws against criminals and the proceeds of crime, respect for Constitutional freedoms and civil liberties should not be abandoned. Nor, they advocate, should concerns about money laundering be allowed to serve as a stalking horse for tax collectors.

The organisation's views are rejected by many European nations and many of the intranational organisations which it so often criticises, who see it as a lobbying mouthpiece for the Offshore Financial Centres. However, the organisation tends to be much more effective in the U.S.A. which also believes in promoting tax competition, both internally (between the 50 states) and internationally (as U.S. tax burdens are relatively low compared to other developed nations).