"SHELL COMPANY -- A company set up by fraudulent operators as a front to conceal tax evasion schemes.
...
OCDE - Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques
Centre for Tax Policy and Administration"
[http://www.oecd.org/ctp/glossaryoftaxterms.htm]

In the parlance of the taxmen these kind of companies are also called "service companies", a bit misleading/confusing as the only "service" they provide are sham transactions, either for tax evasion purposes or to artificially inflate sales.

Based on text given in French on VAT Evasion. Prosecutor pronounce such title for companies which have issued invoices for gods or serviced not happened actually at all.

Seriously.

How many readers are going to know and understand the multitude of figurative terms ('missing trader', 'carousel', 'buffer', 'platform', 'shell') used in describing these VAT frauds?

Providing a semantic translation of the French expression is worth while here. If you are *sure* you can match it up with what HM Revenue & Customs would call it, do so in parentheses with mention to that effect.


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Note added at 1 day5 hrs (2013-01-19 18:49:30 GMT)
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See this 2006 document from CIAT, an inter-governmental tax intelligence group, and note the countries participating in the Working Group.
http://webdms.ciat.org/action.php?kt_path_info=ktcore.action...

Relevant passage:
"_Carrousel_ – name given to a kind of Value Added Tax (VAT) fraud, perpetrated by several companies (at least three). It is very common in the European Union (EU) where it involves companies headquartered in, at least, two integrating countries, or, eventually, external to the EU. This scheme aims to:
- Divide the avoided VAT among the participants of the scheme;
- Get the deduction or the VAT refund that actually were never collected;
- Reduce the final price of the goods.
The fraud begins with the establishment of a group of companies headquartered in two or more countries of that economic block, which carry out imports and exports actions between them. Some of these have as objective to “create” the VAT credit by means of an invoicing circuit. In this kind of fraud, typically take part:
- a supplier company located in other country; actually this allows the legal admittance of goods in the country, without paying the due VAT to the customs;
- a national company, called “taxi company” (also called “missing trader”),
with irregularities in the tax area, responsible for invoicing the goods with a deductible VAT for its client, at a lower price than the buying price, without collecting to the Treasury the due VAT; and
- a “reducing” company (beneficiary of the deduction) in this same country, main beneficiary of the scheme; who is, generally, the wholesaler and is dedicated to an actual activity, partially outside the “carrousel” circuit."

Just because HM Revenue & Customs chooses to borrow (and anglicise) one term from the French ("carousel" for 'carrousel') but substitute a different term ("missing trader") for another ('société taxi') doesn't mean the rest of the world will do the same.:-)