TJN’s 2013 accounts

A Milestone Year

The Tax Justice Network was formally launched at the British Houses of Parliament in March 2003; we celebrated our tenth anniversary in 2013. The past ten years has seen remarkable progress, with tax justice now established as a mainstream public issue in many countries around the world. We remain active in forming new research communities to engage on this subject, including economics geographers, political scientists, political economists, human rights specialists, and philosophers. Alongside these research communities, we are also building a global network of investigative journalists supported by an online hub to assist with sharing data and developing news stories. The global tax justice movement has steadily grown, and in 2013 we launched the Global Alliance for Tax Justice to coordinate campaigns at the international level.

During 2013 both G8 and G20 picked up on all or parts of our key demands for financial market transparency: multilateral and automatic exchange of information, country-by-country reporting; and disclosure of beneficial ownership information. We also saw the launch of the OECD’s Base Erosion Profits Shifting programme, which was at least in part a response to TJN’s calls for moves to tackle corporate tax avoidance.

TJN has responded to these changes. We have restructured to separate our research advocacy activities from campaign coordinating and national advocacy activities. We have created a new company with charitable purpose (Tax Justice Research Limited) to raise funds from charitable donors. We have launched a new programme in conjunction with the Centre of Investigate Journalism at London’s City University to provide specialist training to investigative journalists around the world. In line with our commitment to operating as a ‘virtual’ office, during 2013 we invested in a comprehensive transition to Office365 with a new website, new blog, new APP, new social media hub, and a cloud-based file sharing. We have recruited new Senior Advisers to support our broadening thematic focus.

When we first mooted our Mobilising for Tax Justice programme in January 2009 it was anticipated that we might achieve our primary goal of putting tax justice issues on the global agenda by mid-2015. This task was achieved ahead of schedule. We now aim to broaden and deepen the tax justice agenda, investigating more case studies of abusive tax practices (particularly in poorer countries), confronting the global tax wars that wreck national tax systems, and addressing how corporate tax abuse and tax havenry deprive countries and their citizens of the resources they need to meet their human rights commitments. We expect to be as busy in the coming decade as we were in the last.