Close tax havens, open up small-business lending?

Offshore tax havens have a new critic: small businesses.

On Tuesday, hundreds of these businesses will join in the announcement of a grass-roots campaign against tax avoidance that has already drawn support from a prominent lawmaker.

The campaign, Business and Investors Against Tax Haven Abuse, is backed by Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, who in recent years has investigated offshore tax havens and the large companies and wealthy investors that use them.

Senator Levin plans to announce the campaign with its supporters, a coalition of three nonprofit groups — the American Sustainable Business Council, Business for Shared Prosperity and Wealth for the Common Good. They will release a 25-page report that contends that American multinational corporations use havens to avoid $37 billion in federal taxes each year, a figure the groups call conservative.

By LYNNLEY BROWNING

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/business/20tax.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=politics&adxnnlx=1279735209-4VFuBfiPTDHRQGWLxQKtgw