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Tax Havens

I've been working with Canadians for Tax Fairness since they started a couple of years ago, and it was extremely satisfying to see them in action during the current media frenzy around the tax haven data leak. Last December we created an issue specific campaign site about tax havens, and although it hadn't taken off, I'm hoping it's going to get a little bump now.

While I was waiting, I checked out google webmaster and noticed that the campaign site had been getting a search traffic increase over the past week or so, and I guessed that it was related to journalists searching who were in on the leak, preparing their stories. I was delighted to see our campaign site sitting at number 7 for the search term "tax havens".

Then it occurred to me to check out google trends to see what they had to say about the search term, and I offer you the following info graphics from them. I thought the geographic one might be especially illuminating, in particular showing that Australia is surprisingly interested. What's not evident is why they're interested - a nation of investigative journalists, or a a population desperate to hide their cash from the taxman?

Another curiosity - why is this only in Anglo-American countries + India? Then it dawned on me ... I'd have to look for the translation to get any traffic from say, Russia. After trying and failing to figure that out, I did manage this search trend for Cyprus.

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