Senate Examines Cayman Islands Tax Shelters

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on the use of offshore corporate tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, on the heels of hearings elsewhere in the Senate on individual tax havens in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Investigators from the Government Accountability Office reported to the committee on their investigation of a five-story building in the Cayman Islands that serves as the address for thousands of U.S. companies. "The last time that the press and the Senate looked at the Ugland House, in 2004, it had 12,748 tenants," said committee Chairman Max Baucus (pictured), D-Mont. "We asked GAO to go and look for itself. Remarkably, in the last four years, the Ugland House has found room for 6,000 new tenants, without even adding a new floor." Up to 9,000 of the residents of the building are American entities, he noted.