This background memorandum outlines how the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s (UK) domestic entity and tax laws, combined with the UK’s extended influence effected through the network of its Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories, when combined with low corporate and other income tax rates for selected items, particularly for trusts and multinational corporations that can take advantage of profit shifting accounting practices, jeopardise women’s human and gender equality rights in the UK, Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories:
- At the domestic level, particularly with respect to women
- As ‘upstream’ countries from which profits and productive assets are funnelled in the form of income, land, and property assets through and to countries that tax accumulated after-tax incomes very lightly, and
- As ‘downstream’ countries that direct low- or zero-taxed profits to the UK and its network.