The League Table: Who Loses, Who Inflicts, and Who Sets the Rules

Every country in this table loses money to corporate tax avoidance. What surprises most people is that several of them also cause it: the same governments that lose billions when profit is shifted out of reach are, through their own laws and the territories they are responsible for, helping profit be shifted out of someone else's. The UK loses about US$16.9 billion a year and inflicts about US$23.5 billion of loss on other countries. That is not a contradiction. It is how the system is built. None of it requires anyone to break the law.

The numbers below come from official rates and from the Tax Justice Network's State of Tax Justice 2024, which uses the OECD's aggregated country-by-country reporting data for 2021. Read them as careful estimates built on the best public data, not as audited government accounts. We have put the year and the source on every figure, because a number without a date and a source is just an opinion with a decimal point.

How to read the duality

There are two separate cuts, and they tell different halves of one story.

• Loss suffered is the corporate tax revenue a country does not collect because profit earned there is booked somewhere else.
• Loss inflicted is the corporate tax revenue other countries do not collect because profit is booked through this one, or through the dependencies it is responsible for.

A country can be a big loser and a big inflicter at the same time. The US is the clearest case: it loses about US$32.6 billion a year and inflicts about US$37.5 billion on others. The story is not "victim countries versus haven countries." For the largest economies, it is the same countries on both sides of the ledger.

Part 1 - Headline corporate tax rate (2026)

Note: these are the statutory rates a profitable company is supposed to pay. The rest of this table is about the gap between that and what actually happens to profit that can move.

Part 2 - The two cuts: loss suffered vs loss inflicted

All figures in US$ millions per year. Source: Tax Justice Network, State of Tax Justice 2024 (data year 2021), from the OECD's country-by-country reporting data using the Cobham-Jansky and Garcia-Bernardo-Jansky methodology. A newer 2025 edition now exists; we use the 2024 edition consistently so every figure on this site reconciles to one source.

The story in one line: Australia is mostly a victim, Canada is mostly a cause, and the UK and US are both at the same time and on a far larger scale. South Africa is not separately pinned in this edition; we give its loss from a different source below rather than invent a figure to fill the cell.

A note on a number you may have seen elsewhere. The figures sometimes quoted as "the UK costs the world US$129 billion" or similar are a broader measure that folds in the UK's network of Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories (Cayman, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Jersey) as a single bloc. The US$23.5 billion above is the UK on its own. Same source, different scope. We have kept them separate so the comparison stays honest.

Part 3 - Corporate Tax Haven Index standing

The Corporate Tax Haven Index, published by the Tax Justice Network, ranks jurisdictions by how much their laws let multinationals underpay, weighted by the volume of corporate financial flows they carry. A lower rank number means a bigger enabler.

Important caveat: the UK, US and South Africa ranks are from the 2024 edition; Canada, Australia and India are from the 2021 edition. They come from different years and are not a single clean league. Read them as "where each country sits in its own most-recent published ranking," not as a finishing order. South Africa's rank is out of 70 jurisdictions covered in the 2024 edition.

The bigger picture the UK rank hides: on its own the UK sits at 19, but the three British Overseas Territories of the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda each score 100 out of 100 on the haven scale and sit at the very top of the global index. The UK's domestic rank understates the footprint of the system it presides over.

Part 4 - Financial Secrecy Index standing

The Financial Secrecy Index, also from the Tax Justice Network, is a different measure: how much financial secrecy a country's laws enable, weighted by its share of global cross-border financial services. It measures contribution to global opacity, not how much a country itself loses. The 2025 edition was released on 3 June 2025 and covers 141 jurisdictions.

We have used the confirmed 2022 ranks for the UK, Canada, Australia and India because their exact 2025 positions are not yet pinned to a primary published figure; the US number one is confirmed for 2025. South Africa's exact rank in the 2025 edition is likewise not pinned to a primary published figure, so we have left it blank rather than invent one. The 2025 global top ten, in order, is: United States, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Germany, Netherlands, South Korea, Guernsey, Japan.

Key facts

• The UK loses about US$16.9 billion a year to corporate tax abuse and inflicts about US$23.5 billion on other countries.
• The US loses about US$32.6 billion and inflicts about US$37.5 billion: the biggest figure on both sides of the table.
• Canada loses the least of the five (about US$8.9 billion) but inflicts the second-most (about US$31.2 billion).
• Australia loses about US$22.1 billion and inflicts only about US$1.5 billion: closest to a pure victim.
• India loses about US$21.4 billion a year, among the largest sufferers of the five.
• The US is number one on the Financial Secrecy Index in both 2022 and 2025, with its secrecy score worsening from 67.4 to 68.6 out of 100.

The point

Look at the two middle columns of Part 2 again. If avoidance were simply something done to rich countries by faraway islands, the "inflicted" column would be near zero for the UK, the US and Canada. It is not. The countries with the votes to change the rules are, on the same dataset, among the countries the rules benefit. That is the finding. Who should you be cross with? Not a company filing its accounts to the letter. The people who write, and decline to rewrite, the rules.