The front page of the Cayman Compass, Monday 8th June 2015
More fallout from the toxic FIFA scandal (see here, here and here). Continue reading “In memoriam: FIFA’s stench kills free speech in Cayman”
From Eurodad: a wonderful sign that people are starting to gear up to challenge the many corporate tax abuses run out of secrecy jurisdictions like the European Dodgy Duchy of Luxembourg.
Continue reading “Luxembourg: the campaign on corporate tax has only just begun”
The OECD’s Chateau de la Muette
Sigh. Country-by-country reporting, an idea first mooted and pushed by Richard Murphy for TJN – is making slow but steady headway, in various fora internationally. The OECD, which only relatively rarely fails to disappoint, has been weighing in on this weighty affair. We now report on the latest news from this part of the front line.
From Alex Cobham’s blog, Uncounted: Continue reading “OECD country-by-country reporting: Strangled at birth”
The Economist gets radical
Recently, we wrote an article welcoming a major intervention by The Economist magazine, which was arguing that rules allowing people and corporations to set interest payments against their tax bills is a historical anachronism whose time has now gone.
Continue reading “TJN in The Economist: on the precious corporate income tax”
The Sydney News reports:
“The Australian government has produced draft legislation to classify the financial accounts of private wealthy families, in order to deter kidnappers.”
and there’s more, summed up by The Guardian: Continue reading “Australia may try to exempt wealthy via scaremongering”
Guest blog from Sigrid Klæboe Jacobsen of TJN Norway
On the 5th of June, a unanimous Norwegian Parliament voted for establishing a beneficial ownership registry. Continue reading “Norwegian Parliament votes for public registry of ownership”
Number-crunching, à la Private Eye: the case of HSBC and its Swiss fine for “organisational deficiencies” in relation to money-laundering.
Not all the assets under management were laundered, of course. Far from it, we must hope. But the “organisational deficiencies” – including reassuring clients that no information would reach their home authorities, or using offshore accounts to circumvent disclosure requirements – represent risks that applied to the whole operation.
To put it another way, the fine is about a fifth of the £135 million in tax that HMRC recovered in the UK alone.
Even the prosecutor imposing the fine was embarrassed, and “launched a stinging attack” on the Swiss law that apparently prevented anything within yodeling distance of being a deterrent.
Cross-posted from Uncounted
FIFA boss Sepp Blatter instructs the auditors
From Francine McKenna:
“Of all the individuals and firms tied up in the scandal over bribery and corruption at FIFA, scrutiny has so far largely escaped KPMG, the soccer association’s external auditor.”
That’s the summary, and our quote of the day. The article continues: Continue reading “Did KPMG spot anything amiss at FIFA?”
When we look back, might today be the day that momentum swung decisively against current international tax rules?
An independent commission made up of leading international economists, development thinkers and tax experts (see the graphic) has called for a radical overhaul of international corporate tax rules.
There are six main recommendations, set out below. Taken together, it’s possible that they will provide the basis for the kind of comprehensive reworking of tax rules that the G20 and G8 signally failed to deliver when they allowed the OECD mandate on BEPS (corporate tax Base Erosion and Profit-Shifting) to be watered down to a tweaking of the current system.
Continue reading “International commission calls for corporate tax reform”
May 2015. Welcome to the fifth Tax Justice Research Bulletin, a monthly series dedicated to tracking the latest developments in policy-relevant research on national and international taxation.
This issue looks at a fascinating thesis on the different people and organisations that influence the OECD revision of corporate tax rules; and a new analysis from the IMF on the scale of corporate profit-shifting, with particular attention to developing countries’ revenue losses. The Spotlight falls on the Financial Secrecy Index, which has just been published in Economic Geography. Continue reading “Tax Justice Research Bulletin 1(5)”
This headline may seem odd. Conventionally tax evasion involves cutting taxes by breaking laws; using tax incentives is a different creature altogether: it involves cutting taxes by using the law.
But this useful new report from the European parliament contains a twist on the conventional wisdom: Continue reading “Quote of the day – tax incentives as official tax evasion”
Cross-posted with the Uncounted blog, by TJN’s research director Alex Cobham.
World No Tobacco day was on Sunday (yesterday.)
World No Tobacco Day: Marching to Big Tobacco’s tune?
Has World No Tobacco Day 2015 – this Sunday – been manipulated by Big Tobacco’s lobbying agenda? Where the tobacco lobby is concerned, it would be naive to think there’s smoke without fire.
Continue reading “World No Tobacco Day: Marching to Big Tobacco’s tune?”
Brazilians have good reason to complain
We’ve just written about the role of Goldman Sachs in distorting U.S. sports and harming smaller players via tax cheating. Well, here is yet another thing to make you choke on your cornflakes: FIFA hurting poor countries though what we’d describe as aggressive, idiosyncratic tax cheating. Continue reading “The other FIFA scandal: poor countries and the tax-free bubble”
A stadium financier, caught on camera yesterday
As if the FIFA scandal weren’t enough to be choking on.
Quoted in the LA Times, an article about Goldman Sachs’ role in financing large sports stadium:
“Goldman Sachs’ job is to use, if not disguise, every public funding tax shelter and loophole.”
Here is the (sour) juice of this particular story, which mostly concerns the San Diego Chargers: Continue reading “How Goldman Sachs distorts sports via tax cheating”
The Global Week of Action for #TaxJustice, which will take place in June 16-23, 2015, aims to encourage and cross-promote diverse activities that are initiated across our tax justice communities, to increase public pressure on governments across the world. Members and allies of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ), a sister organisation of ours (which originally emerged from TJN and is now a separate organisation) are kindly invited to join this initiative and organise or participate in activities in their countries.
The Global Alliance for Tax Justice and its regional members are working with Oxfam, ActionAid, Christian Aid, Public Services International and any other interested partners to coordinate country-level actions and make this Global Week of Action a reality.
The proposal is to begin with an FfD action in New York on June 16, hold diverse activities around the globe through the week, and conclude with a series of public actions on World Public Services Day on June 23. Activities may include film screenings, meeting with government leaders, participating in the GATJ photo petition or any other creative ideas you might have.
If you are interested in organizing or participating in activities in your country during this Global Week of Action for #TaxJustice, June 16-23, 2015, please contact GATJ Campaign + Communications Coordinator Teresa Marshall at [email protected] and Communications Officer Isabel Ortigosa at [email protected] for further information and campaign support.
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Joseph Stiglitz, (WEF, creative commons.)
Our quote of the day, from Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, commenting in the wake of the UK election:
“Some of these people are just using your rule of law to protect money they have stolen in other countries . . . From a global point of view, you are aiding and abetting theft.”
Continue reading “Stiglitz to tax haven UK: you are aiding and abetting theft”
Amazon’s Luxembourg offices. They are little, but their accountants call them huge. What exactly happens behind that diddy little door?
Last Saturday The Guardian broke a story about the U.S. multinational Amazon:
“From the start of this month the online retailer has started booking its sales through the UK. . . The group made $8.3bn (£5.3bn) of worldwide sales from British online shoppers but for 11 years all these internet transactions have been booked in Luxembourg.”
Continue reading “Amazon to curb Luxembourg tax schemes: a sign of things to come?”
In the Tax Justice Network’s May 2015 Podcast:
Do our politicians believe in the societies they serve or not? The Taxcast looks at making the tax returns of our elected representatives public and the inspirational achievement of award winning journalist Umar Cheema of the Centre for Investigative Reporting in making Pakistan only the fourth country in the world to publish the tax returns of its Parliamentarians.
Also: how the British general election demonstrates political capture by finance interests; libertarian paradise – the world’s newest tax haven; and is Singapore trying to shut down reporting on its tax haven status?
Featuring: John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network, @UmarCheema1 of the Centre for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan. www.cirp.pk Produced and presented by @Naomi_Fowler for the Tax Justice Network.
“A senior Finance Ministry official told me that when the government of Pakistan decided to make tax data public, they got to hear from the UK authorities that now we will come under pressure to do the same in the UK. I don’t know when they do but one should hope for the best and the Tax Justice Network must use the example of Pakistan for pressuring the authorities in London.”
~ @UmarCheema1
You can download to listen to any time offline here: (right click and save as)
http://traffic.libsyn.com/
Taxcast home sites:
Two Economist blogs in a row: this time we’ve a fine excuse because their image comes from our TJN Senior Adviser, Jim Henry, who presented this data at the TJN-supported Illicit Financial Journalism Programme in London last week, and gave a preview last February in our Taxcast (see below): “just what does a bank have to do to lose its licence?”.
The graph on the right comes from a story in The Economist entitled and subtitled Justice, interrupted: more wrongdoing at banks, more swingeing fines, no prosecutions. Continue reading “Justice, interrupted: will bankers get off the hook ever more lightly?”
We’ve said this before, and we may have felt radical saying it at the time – but now it’s The Economist saying it. It has an article entitled and subtitled A senseless subsidy: Most Western economies sweeten the cost of borrowing. That is a bad idea.
Quite so. And the potential rewards it outlines from doing so are incredible.
There are the tax revenues, for one thing: it estimates that the subsidy cost the equivalent of 2-5% of GDP in tax revenues in rich countries by the time the global financial crisis struck. But here is another massive reward for countries suffering from financial ‘capture’:
“Around the world banks would shrink.”
Continue reading “Economist: why it’s time to stop making debt tax-deductible”
A seminar at the European parliament in Brussels, featuring TJN’s Markus Meinzer: Continue reading “Tax wars: seminar at European parliament”
Margaret Hodge
Margaret Hodge, the fiery head of the UK’s Public Accounts Committee, has been hauling the bosses of large multinational corporations over the coals for their egregious abuses of the UK tax system. Now, post-election, she is stepping down.
Many tax professionals in the UK dislike, hate, or even loathe her. That is essentially because she has fought against their interests, in the public interest.
We won’t do a detailed dissection of her time in the hot seat. If you want that, you might read this, from UK tax barrister Jolyon Maugham. As he says:
“The tax profession, by and large, will be delighted to see the back of her. . . . Nevertheless, I struggle to see any other serious claimant to the title of most influential Opposition MP of the last Parliamentary term.”