Bermuda was in the headlines of The Salt Lake Tribune last week.

The subject of Bermuda as a so-called "offshore tax haven" reared its head in Utah because the governor there, Mike Leavitt, is lobbying for businesses to base themselves in his state. However Mr. Leavitt's family owns an insurance company which has a subsidiary incorporated in Bermuda.

This fact has been seized upon as an example of hypocrisy.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune: "Mike Leavitt said although he has an ownership interest in all Leavitt Group properties, "I'm not involved in the management, and . . . I have limited details of what they're doing."He said he was aware of the subsidiary domiciled in Bermuda, but "I'm not even sure why they did it. I assume that there was a logical reason. That's where many of the companies of that sort are headquartered, and I think it's primarily . . . for regulatory purposes."

The governor said there was no contradiction between his high-profile public campaign to bring businesses to Utah and his family's incorporation of an offshore company. "

Bermuda's business leaders have been trying for some to remove the "tax haven" label, claiming it is a misrepresentation of the Island. Harry Wilken, president of Jardine Matheson International Services Limited and a spokesperson for international business in Bermuda, recently said: "We have to get that message through that Bermuda is not in the business of interfering in other peoples' tax codes and neither do we alter our tax regulations to attract foreign capital."

Other experts observe that Bermuda serves a useful economic purpose for the international business community: As William Woods, former head of the Bermuda Stock Exchange explained in his book B2B Exchanges 2.0:

"The tax rules that have developed in the US and which deal with foreign income are now so out of step with the global economy that being a US corporation makes you uncompetitive on the global stage.

"Accordingly, inversions are now serving an important economic purpose by allowing US based businesses to compete effectively in the international arena, but at the same time to maintain their US businesses - thus preserving the manufacturing base and associated jobs in the US.

The alternative is that those US jobs and the manufacturing base will be lost to foreign competitors, just as the US steel industry was devastated by foreign competition. "