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Financial crises charge nations immense costs and lead to weakening of wellbeing. Politicians, professionals and academicians search for understanding of causes of financial crisis to enable them to spot their first hallmarks, and to adopt efficient regulative measures that may prevent financial crises and accompanying costs. When economists discuss an occurrence of the 2008 financial crisis they pay attention to plentiful reasons - but not taxes. This paper aims to investigate possible role income taxes might have played in the securitisation of bank assets in 2008 financial crisis. To understand role taxes taken in the outburst of the 2008 financial crisis, the paper first briefly explains role of securitisation of bank's assets in the outburst of the 2008 financial crisis. Then it discusses requirement of tax neutrality of securitisation. Empirical research focuses on the relationship between favourable taxing jurisdictions in tax havens and location of the commercial banks' branches and commercial banks' assets. It shows that offshore centres which are said to provide preferential tax regimes promote location of branches and assets of commercial banks therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization, modern information technologies and international mobility of capital provide opportunities to shift capital and establish companies' seats around the world. The strategy that combines conduit companies and advantages of tax treaties is known as treaty shopping. Several EU Member States did not conclude tax treaties with tax havens countries. However, some other EU countries did. The findings of our analysis of the entire network of bilateral tax treaties concluded by all EU MSs show, that the later countries' tax treaties enable income tax reduction or avoidance also to residents of those EU MSs which did not sign bilateral tax treaties with tax havens. The network of tax treaties with tax havens signed by some EU MSs contributes to erosion of EU MSs' tax bases and government budget revenues. Elimination of tax treaties abuse would require common supranational EU policy in concluding bilateral tax treaties including the selection of treaty partners or adoption of one EU multilateral tax treaty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]