Via the Global Alliance for Tax Justice:
Last week the Interim Working Group of the African IFF Campaign Platform launched the “Stop the Bleeding” campaign in Uhuru park, a place historically associated with the struggle for freedom in Nairobi, Kenya.
Continue reading “Stop the bleeding: new African tax justice campaign”
Every now and then, a court case comes up that gives curious insight into the offshore world of tax havens. This rather sad tale is quite suggestive of the mindset that one so often finds offshore.
“The level of conflict between these parents is shameful. They can take credit for having two lovely children but their current behaviour is making their children miserable.”
Continue reading “The sorry tale of the offshore wheeler-dealer”
Rudolf Elmer, whistleblower and victim of the Swiss banking secrecy complex
Update, Oct 10, 2018 – Swiss top court knocks down bid to extend banking secrecy. Good news for Elmer, following his partial victory in 2016.
Update, Jan 4, 2016: Elmer has won a partial victory, underlining the main point of this blog. In a civil suit brought by Elmer, the Swiss Federal Court has overturned one of the rulings against him because, it ruled, the Zurich judges broke Federal law when they turned down Elmer’s complaint. Elmer told us that two judges in question face investigation and possibly even a court trial. See the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on the case and the court ruling itself here.
Today, Switzerland tightens up its legislation to be able to crack down more effectively on whistleblowers. On this occasion we’re proud to host a guest blog by Rudolf Elmer, a Swiss whistleblower who has been subject to severe harassment by the Swiss courts for around a decade now.
The harassment has extended to his family: it is the sort of treatment one might expect of a totalitarian regime, not of an advanced Western nation.
The harassment is not just from the courts and the financial sector: we should add that, with a fair few honourable exceptions, Swiss media have largely taken the financial centre’s line: that Elmer is a thief and a scoundrel, rather than a whistleblower acting in the public interest.
The truckload of evidence Elmer provides here will, we think, convince you beyond any doubt that the Swiss financial sector has successfully corrupted its courts system.
Continue reading “Guest blog: how Switzerland corrupted its courts to nail Rudolf Elmer”
JFK
The quote is from John F. Kennedy, speaking in 1961 (hat tip: the Cayman Reporter):
“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.”
The context for the quote was not tax but the Cold War and the rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Still, it expounds a strong set of general principles which multinational firms and wealthy individuals might like to ponder.
June 2015. Surprising everyone by actually arriving within the stated month, here’s the sixth Tax Justice Research Bulletin – a monthly series dedicated to tracking the latest developments in policy-relevant research on national and international tax, available in full over at TJN.
This issue looks at a new paper in The Lancet on the potential links between direct taxation and health outcomes including child mortality; and at research on the suitability or otherwise of accounting data for tax purposes. The Spotlight falls on tobacco taxes, the shameful manipulation of economic arguments by Big Tobacco, and a paper entitled The Single Best Health Policy in the World: Tobacco Taxes.
If this issue were any more health-y, you could put a vest on it and send it out to do a half-Iron Man with Owen Barder. Continue reading “Tax Justice Research Bulletin 1(6)”
There are a number of ways in which the interests of environmental groups align with those of the tax justice community. Here’s a curious one, showing how lobbyists against the expansion of major airports in Britain could wield a tax haven tool in their defence.
A new Airports Commission will soon publish its report on the next steps for aviation in Britain, and whether Britain needs more runways. Now, from Andrew Simms, writing in The Guardian:
“The only problem is that many feel it avoided the far more important questions: whether Britain needs any more runways at all and if a better approach would be to tackle the small numbers of very frequent flyers.
. . .
The places in Britain which are home to the most frequent flyers are shown to be the City of London, the boroughs of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea, and Surrey. He found the most common destinations these UK residents are flying to are recognised tax havens.”
Now there’s an interesting little tale.
And for those interested in the UK, a rather separate point from Philip Baker QC, one of the country’s leading tax experts, also via The Guardian:
“I don’t think in the last 20 years or so one can say that governments have driven corporation tax policy. It’s the large companies that have driven the direction of corporate tax policy.”
You can find some fascinating data to back that assertion up, here. And of course this comment backs up our Finance Curse thesis.
By Hussein Kamal
Cross-posted with permission from Egyptianomics Continue reading “Business as usual for Egypt’s tax avoiders”
Prof. Sol Picciotto
Capital flows, tax havens and offshore secrecy
A guest post by Prof. Sol Picciotto, a TJN Senior Adviser. This was first published in African Agenda, vol. 18 No. 2, published June 2015
The discussion of the Mbeki Panel report in the last issue of African Agenda, in both the Editorial and the article by Tetteh Hormeku, rightly drew attention to the need to look beyond the issue of ‘illegal flows’. While the Panel’s concern with ‘money illegally earned, transferred or used’ is important, there are much wider implications raised by the report. Continue reading “Tax havens: beyond illicit financial flows”
Please endorse the Lima Declaration on Tax Justice and Human Rights!
The initial list of signatories will be announced on World Public Services Day, 23 June 2015, the culmination of the Global Week of Action for #TaxJustice. Additional signatories will be continue to be welcomed beyond that date.
The Lima Declaration arises from the international strategy meeting, “Advancing Tax Justice through Human Rights,” held in Lima, Peru in April 2015, convened by the Center for Economic and Social Rights, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, Oxfam, Red Latinoamericana sobre Deuda, Desarrollo y Derechos (LatinDADD), Red de Justicia Fiscal de América Latina y el Caribe and the Tax Justice Network.
For more info, contact: [email protected] or [email protected]
Read the full text of the declaration at the following web links. Please sign below!
English: http://bit.ly/1H2fADr
Español: http://bit.ly/1eDSMh7
Français: http://bit.ly/1IdbsQa
Sign up to the Declaration here.
See the Declaration with initial signatories here.
Continue reading “The Lima Declaration on Tax Justice and Human Rights”
Our annual discussion workshop on the theme of Should Nation States Compete? kicks off tomorrow morning in London at 10h00.
The venue is Room C312 in the Tait Building, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB – see campus map below.
The nearest underground station is Angel (approximately 7 minutes walk from Northampton Square).
Calling for sustainable government funding for vital public services and an end to corporate tax dodging, members of the world’s largest labour, NGO and faith organizations have united across borders in the first ever Global Week of Action for #TaxJustice, June 16-23, 2015. On the ground public and social media actions have happened in more than 43 countries.
The indefatigable Teresa Marshall, co-ordinator for the Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ), has written this summary of the first global week of action. Continue reading “First global week of action for tax justice hits 43 countries”
Update: this post is now on Naked Capitalism.
Update 2: cop a couple of interesting comments under this blog, including further reading.
Not long after a newspaper editor critical of local financial sector corruption fled the Cayman Islands, followed by apparent “tombstones” death threats, another brave journalist with the Cayman Reporter has published a fiery editorial, which rings true to many of the things we have said in the past:
“The financial industry including the regulators in the Cayman Islands has a parallel universe of their own standards and beliefs. One where it does not matter what the facts are, they say and believe is the surreal reality.”
Continue reading “Cayman papers in rare, savage attacks on UK and financial sector”
In this excerpt from an interview recorded in June 2015, Ross Ashcroft talks with film-maker Harold Crooks (The Corporation, Surviving Progress, The Price We Pay) and TJN’s director, John Christensen, about the threat posed by tax havens to parliamentary democracy. Continue reading “Tax and the Death of Democracy – interview from The Renegade Economist”
This new graph from the IMF is just the latest piece of research that follows on from the in-depth work of Thomas Piketty and others looking at the relationship between top income tax rates and inequality. The graph here makes the point adequately. Put crudely, the lower the top tax rate, the more inequality will rise.
The IMF discussion note is called Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective, and it goes far beyond tax. It was summarised, not inaccurately, in the Pacific Standard, thus:
“The IMF Confirms That ‘Trickle-Down’ Economics Is, Indeed, a Joke”
Continue reading “New IMF research: tax affects inequality; inequality affects growth”
June 2015 Tax Justice Network Podcast:
Continue reading “The Tax Justice Network Podcast, June 2015”
A new report from the OECD (hat tip: Dan Hind) contributes to what is now accepted wisdom in finance-and-growth circles: too much finance is bad for you. Our Finance Curse analysis explores this in detail. This blog is merely a pointer to the OECD study published a few days ago, which states:
“The empirical evidence for OECD countries over the past five decades indicates that more finance is linked to sharply higher growth at low levels of financial development but that, above a certain point and at the margin, further financial expansion is associated with slower growth.”
Continue reading “New OECD report backs TJN’s Finance Curse research”
From ActionAid, another excellent investigation into a corporate tax dodge in Malawi, which on some measures is the world’s poorest country:
Today [June 17] we’ve released an investigation into an Australian mining company called Paladin, operating in Malawi – the world’s poorest country. We found that through using complex corporate structures and negotiating a huge tax break, over the last 6 years, the company has cuts its tax bill by US$43 million.
In one year this could’ve paid for one of the following:
Continue reading “Exposed: $43 million tax dodge in world’s poorest country”
With thanks to GATJ
We have written for years about how the OECD, a club of rich countries has dominated the international tax system and that this inevitably skews the system in the favour of, well, rich countries. A potentially far more representative body exists — the UN Tax Committee — but the OECD and its member states have exerted powerful pressure to restrict its mandate and powers and to ensure that it is under-resourced, given low status, and unable to mount a challenge to rich countries’ needs. Continue reading “10 Reasons Why an Intergovernmental UN Tax Body Will Benefit Everyone”
Via the Global Alliance for Tax Justice:
Organisations are now invited to endorse the Lima Declaration on Tax Justice and Human Rights. Continue reading “Sign on! Lima Declaration on Tax Justice and Human Rights”
Juncker and tax haven Luxembourg. We won’t tire of repeating this one. Hat tip: David Walch
We have often remarked how international tax haven blacklists generally reflect the political powers and influence of nation states; as a result they tend to include ‘minnows’ but not the big fish. (Among other things, this means a lot of econometric studies resting on a baseline of nonsense.)
Continue reading “Juncker’s hidden hand? EU tax haven blacklist omits Luxembourg”
From Andres Knobel
Buenos Aires – On June 10th and 11th, Tax Justice Network together with Argentina’s General Prosecution Office (Ministerio Público Fiscal), Argentina’s Central Bank and other NGOs including Fundación SES, Latindadd and CIPCE hosted a two-day event involving Government and civil society concerning the need for registries of beneficial ownership. The event took place at one of the main halls of Argentina’s Central Bank and was one of the main gatherings of government agencies and NGOs. Continue reading “Agreement in Buenos Aires on need for public registries of beneficial ownership”
