From the ICIJ:
“The British Virgin Islands have never been accused of taking financial secrecy lightly. But last week, members of the BVI legislature took a step toward raising the territory’s noted secrecy protections to new heights. Continue reading “BVI tax haven floats 20 years in prison for whistleblowers”
PRESS RELEASE
New OECD report on automatic information exchange: will developing countries be left out?
Continue reading “TJN responds to new OECD report on automatic information exchange”
British prime minister David Cameron has announced that money is no object when it comes to tackling the floods now inundating towns to the west of London. Continue reading “Your tax cuts at work”
That headline is at least what this contributor would have you take away from his latest column in Forbes. And of course the article speculates that it’s all about tax, tax, and tax Continue reading “Number Renouncing US Citizenship rose 221% in 2013, in tax panic”
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From Aditya Chakrabortty in the UK’s Guardian newspaper: some statistics that are classics of the “Finance Curse” analysis – where an oversized financial centre begins to weigh on the rest of an economy, rather than to support it. Continue reading “London, the Great Sucking Sound, and the Finance Curse”
One of the many devious ploys used by the Swiss financial centre to protect its often illicit gains is to insist on ‘reciprocity’ in the exchange of information. Along the lines of: “If we’re going to share information with Nigeria, then they should share the same kind of information with us!” Continue reading “Why should tax havens insist on ‘reciprocity’ from poor countries?”
From the Equality Trust:
How Inequality Became THE Issue – Five Years of The Spirit Level
Continue reading “How Inequality Became THE Issue – Five Years of The Spirit Level”
From Christian Aid:
“Two-thirds (66 per cent) of the CEOs of large UK firms surveyed agreed that ‘multinationals should be required to publish the revenues, profits and taxes paid for each territory where they operate’.
PwC’s research, which involved 1,344 interviews with CEOs in 68 countries, also found that across all the CEOs surveyed, 59 per cent supported the requirement.”
Which has been a core TJN campaign for the last decade or so. We are delighted to have made so much headway. But there’s still a long way to go.
TJN has previously challenged the prevailing discourse on corruption; and we have taken particular issue with Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which looks at corruption through a highly distorted prism. Continue reading “Flipping the corruption myth”
February 4, 2014
Today’s edition of the Jersey Evening Post leads with an article headed ‘Official: Why food costs so much more in Jersey’. Food prices, according to a new study, are one third higher than in the UK. Worse, once taxes and duties are excluded, the difference rises to 50 percent. Continue reading “Why does food cost so much in Jersey?”
Reuters reports:
“Fiat said on Wednesday it would register the holding of its newly created Fiat Chrysler Automobiles group in the Netherlands and set its tax domicile in Britain Continue reading “Fiat moves tax domicile to tax haven UK – but will it create jobs?”
From the-best-of-both-worlds.com
This zombie just won’t die. From BusinessWeek:
“Solving the dispute over undeclared Italian funds with Swiss banks will be on the agenda today Continue reading “Swiss subterfuges continuing to fool Italian politicians?”
Image from http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/
We received this email yesterday about opposition in Denmark to a deal to sell a big stake in the state energy company Dong to Goldman Sachs, raising large civil society pushback, Continue reading “Goldman tax dodge fury shakes Denmark government”
The British Virgin Islands (BVI) are back in the news. Last week the islands featured at the cent
re of a huge story about corruption in China. This week’s story concerns UNCTAD’s latest estimates of foreign direct investment flows through companies registered in the BVI. As Reuters reports: Continue reading “BVI got more foreign investment in 2013 than Brazil and India combined – UN”
Dear Prime Minister
The Huffington Post reports you saying:
“Frankly I don’t like any taxes.” Continue reading “Open letter to UK Prime Minister”
From the excellent weekly newsletter of the U.S. inequality-watching organisation Too Much:
“Simon Smiles, the global chief investment officer at the Swiss bank UBS, usually only ladles out advice to investors worth at least $30 million. But Smiles has just done an interview that shares a bit of what he’s telling his clients. Increasing “international pressure on banking secrecy and tax avoidance,” says Smiles, is complicating life for the ultra rich, and they’re searching for simple “certainties.” The advice from Smiles: Invest in “food, water, and death.” Continue reading “UBS: invest in food, water and death”
From the IMF, a Working Paper. It doesn’t make quite the sweeping claim suggested in the headline, but still.
“Using manufacturing and services firm-level data for 30 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, this paper shows that taxation is not a significant driver for the location of foreign firms in SSA, while other investment climate factors, such as infrastructure, human capital, and insitutions, are. By analyzing disaggregate FDI data, the paper establishes that, while there is considerable contrast in behavior between vertical FDI (foreign firms producing for export) and horizontal FDI (foreign firms producing for local markets), taxation is not a key determinant for either type of FDI.”
Our emphasis added. We would have thought that you could find this sort of information on sites such as this one – after all, would you site a car assembly plant in Syria if it offered a fabulous tax break? – but it is still worth measuring these things.
And of course it isn’t just the IMF saying this. A new paper by Francis Weyzig examining the impact of Dutch tax treaties on developing countries has a pithy summary of the research out there:
“Empirical studies show that lower taxes are largely ineffective to attract FDI; determinants like good governance and infrastructure are more important. “
(hat tip: Indra Römgens)
Rudolf Elmer in Mauritius
This month a Swiss court fought back against efforts by the United States to tackle criminal activity and tax its wealthy citizens properly. As Worldwide Tax Daily reports:
Continue reading “Show trial of Swiss whistleblower Elmer now in 9th year”
Our campaigns partner, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, is advertising for a new post: campaigns and communications officer:
Continue reading “New Job: Campaigns and Communications Officer”
From Citizens for Tax Justice:
“At its yearly winter meeting, the Republican National Committee is expected to approve a resolution calling for the repeal of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), a major law enacted in 2010 (as part of the HIRE Act) to clamp down on offshore tax evasion. Continue reading “U.S. Republicans to adopt pro tax evasion platform?”
Alpha Condé
The Guardian has posted a comment from Guinean President, Alpha Condé, currently in Davos at the 2014 World Economic Forum. He gets straight to business in his first paragraph: “As president of Guinea I know we can’t tackle this problem alone – corruption is embedded in the western institutions that have helped bleed our country dry.”
We urge you to read the entire comment, but note how perfectly he sums up his country’s predicament in trying to tackle corruption:
. . . Guinea is incredibly rich in natural resources – with the largest bauxite deposits and the single largest untapped iron ore assets in the world – none of which, until now, the people of Guinea have enjoyed. A small number of offshore companies, aided and abetted by corrupt domestic regimes, bled Guinea’s resources for decades. A slow death facilitated by the network of lawyers, accountants and financial advisers sitting in offices in New York, London, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Singapore.