As part of its probe into member state tax policies, the OECD is asking wealthy individuals what they think of taxation, according to media reports. GoldFinger can imagine that such questions might elicit a somewhat dusty answer.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is trying to find out what the wealthy and other interested parties think about tax issues in a bid to put together a series of "best practice" tax policies for high net worth individuals.

The head of the organisation's tax competition department, Pascal Saint-Amans, said: "The intention of the initiative is not to see how our member states can extract more money from the wealthy. We want to work with them and other interested parties to develop a best practices framework that reflects the views of all those affected."

It is difficult to know whether to treat this seriously or not. The OECD is a club of the world’s main industrialised nations and has frequently called for so-called tax havens to be closed down. As analysts at the US Cato Institute recently pointed out, some OECD nations themselves – even the UK – might be fairly judged to be tax havens on account of the favourable tax treatment of capital gains or non-domiciled residents – well, at least until this year. Even the
US, with its state of

Delaware, arguably has a tax haven operating under the noses of Congressmen.

When the OECD, or for that matter, any other august organisation can come up with a watertight definition of what a tax haven is, then GoldFinger might be prepared to take such initiatives seriously.