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.”
Photo: World Economic Forum, Creative Commons
Via the Fools’ Gold blog:
A Bloomberg report on a Bill Gates interview:
‘Gates scoffed at comparisons linking taxes and regulation to slower growth. “The idea that there’s some direct connection, that all these innovators are on strike because tax rates are at 35 percent on corporations, that’s just such nonsense.” ‘
also:
“The highest economic growth decade was the 1960s. Income tax rates were 90 percent.”
This is part of a much bigger picture: that low (or high) corporate taxes do nothing to make an economy as a whole more (or less) ‘competitive.’ Read more about all this here.
Continue reading “Bill Gates: corporate tax rates at 35% won’t stop the innovators”
Cross-posted with the Uncounted blog: a forthcoming paper in Economic Geography.
The Financial Secrecy Index is the Tax Justice Network’s flagship index of secrecy jurisdictions, or ‘tax havens’. The idea emerged from discussions at the World Social Forum in Nairobi, in January 2007.
In part, it came from frustration with a popular view of corruption as a ‘poor country’ problem – when all the analysis of experts in the Tax Justice Network showed high-income countries as central to financial crime. Continue reading “Financial Secrecy Index: new academic paper”
Harold Crooks’ (The Corporation, Surviving Progress) searing documentary indictment of offshore finance gets it UK premiere at the Open City Documentary Festival in London on 19th June, and will also be screened the following week at TJN’s discussion workshop at City University. Continue reading “The Price We Pay – London premiere on 19th June 2015”
Alex Cobham, TJN’s esteemed Director of Research
From Alex Cobham, TJN Research Director, writing at Uncounted:
“In a strident blog at the International Centre for Tax and Development, Mick Moore, Nora Lustig, Richard Bird, Nancy Birdsall, Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, Richard Manning and Wilson Prichard have called for the rejection of post-2015 tax targets. (Full disclosure – I work with the ICTD, including on the Government Revenue Dataset.)
Seven leading thinkers on development and tax can’t be wrong – can they?” Continue reading “Should tax targets for post-2015 be rejected?”
Prem Sikka
From Prof. Prem Sikka, via email:
“Auditing itself has become one of the biggest frauds of modern times. When was the last time company auditors drew attention to fiddles, tax dodging, money laundering or their own complicity in financial misdemeanours? The penalties for delivering duff audits, as demonstrated by the banking crash, are virtually non-existent. Instead of any fundamental reforms there are plenty of gestures about tweaking audit reports and now changing auditors, in effect a merry-go-round among the big accounting firms.”
We have just mentioned a demonstration today in Luxembourg, in the context of a visit there by the European Parliament committee tasked with following up on the LuxLeaks affair. (It’s known as “The Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Effect” or TAXE for short.) Christian Hallum of Eurodad has now kindly provided, via email, a report on what this body is and how it works. Continue reading “A short FAQ on the European Parliament’s probe into tax rulings”
Edouard Perrin, who faces charges for exposing Luxembourg abuses
Update 2: with a report on the demonstration in Luxemburger Wort, which in contrast to our earlier experiences of Luxembourg media, was quite balanced.
Update1 : with a photo (below) of today’s protest in Luxembourg. Some 50-60 people are reckoned to have attended, a good turnout in tiny, financially captured Luxembourg.
The Dodgy Duchy of Luxembourg, like many small secrecy jurisdictions, can be a nasty place to protest against offshore finance. The sector has its tentacles in the courts, in government: everywhere. The media there is, in our experience, all but captured too, so Luxembourg’s citizenry has a poor record in terms of questioning or challenging the corrupt status quo. To oppose offshore finance can be to risk social censure or — in the case of Antoine Deltour, Edouard Perrin, Dénis Robert, and a number of other whistleblowers — a vicious, personalised attack from the offshore establishment, often led by the Big Four accounting firms such as PWC, which effectively write relevant parts of the Luxembourg legislation. It is a haven for hire. Continue reading “Tax Justice demonstration in Luxembourg as EU tax body visits”
We are delighted to announce the latest edition of our quarterly newsletter,Tax Justice Focus.
This is The Gender Edition, and it is guest edited by Liz Nelson of TJN. It complements a new “Gender” page we’ve just opened up, where these materials will be permanently stored.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Cross-posted from Fools’ Gold:
Our tweet of the day, from a former external member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee:[/vc_column_text][vc_raw_js]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[/vc_raw_js][vc_column_text]This post is just a reminder, really, about all the nonsense that is spoken in the name of ‘competitiveness.’
Of course, this is just quarterly data, and the UK was recently growing faster than France. We aren’t going to get into details in this short blog. Continue reading “Is France’s economy really less ‘competitive’ than Britain’s?”
From Madamsr.com:
“Egypt loses as much as LE5 billion [TJN: that’s over $650 million; there’s also a reference to $2.2 billion in annual trade mispricing] a year in tax revenue due to companies using tax havens to shield profits from taxes, according to a new report from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).
The practice also distorts figures for Foreign Direct Investment and allows companies to make investments in Egypt without disclosing ownership details, says EIPR researcher Osama Diab.”
This is just the latest of many reports that has been produced with the support of the Illicit Financial Journalism Programme, which we’re proud to be part of.
The past record is horrible. But . . . read on
The United Kingdom is, in many respects, the most important single player in the world of offshore tax havens (or secrecy jurisdictions.) It has many offshore characteristics itself, and it runs a network of partly-British havens, whose laws it can strike down when it really wants to. So it is significant that Britain has had an election, which saw a Liberal Democrat/Conservative coalition replaced by a purely Conservative Party government. For those who aren’t familiar with British politics, the Conservatives are the mainstream right-wing party.
Continue reading “Will UK’s new government help poor countries fight tax haven secrecy?”
This article is all about the language of financial lobbying.
The consensus that an “oversized financial centre is indispensible” is strong and at times brutally in-your-face in many countries with oversized financial centres. But this consensus can also be sophisticated and subtle, when needs be. Here’s an example of one of the more subtle bits of lobbying by the City of London, helpfully carried by the Financial Times. The headline reads: Continue reading “How to threaten politicians, the City of London way”
Guess which one got the corporate tax cut?
Cross-posted with Fools’ Gold.
From the Financial Times, a report on a survey by the Tolley Tax Journal of businesses’ responses to the UK’s policy of savage cuts to the corporate income tax. It’s about the UK, but it has wide international relevance.
“More than six out of 10 respondents thought the cut in the corporate tax rate, by 8 percentage points to 20 per cent, had boosted their own companies’ investment and growth, although for most it only had a marginal impact.”
Continue reading “Do real investors chase corporate tax cuts?”