Maya Forstater

The best that can be said 4 "tax neutrality" is that the determination of which jurisdiction's tax is being avoided is left 2 the circumstances of the next person along in the wealth chain - the investor in the offshore hedge fund or the onshore sibling of the offshore hub entity

The image is taken from a survey on perceptions of offshore which amounts to a kind of push polling: you literally have to click "OK" on the spurious distinction between "tax neutrality" and "tax avoidance" before you can even answer the questions

I've had a few respondents from NGO people since then (thanks folks - more welcome) Also a few comments from offshore people saying the survey is biased in favour of the NGO view! So I figure the balance is ok.

I did look at the survey, Maya, but only the first page. I'm not sure what the research question could be, that the survey would tell people to read through the lobbying briefing of the BVI as preamble to asking for their perceptions of the BVI.

Alex - asking ppl to do something similar to what you did here https://www.taxjustice.net/2017/06/21/bvi-blagging-venal-income/ … - - ie given information from the BVI briefing - what are your priors about what is going on?

To start from the BVI's position can only elicit bias: bias because people who don't instinctively share that position are less likely to complete; and bias because everyone who does complete has read that side of the argument immediately before doing so.

But is bias really such a risk here? Prior knowledge can allow info to be assessed. I also don't think it's necessarily true that people's views are like pillows and bear the impression of the last head!