Page 85 – Tax Justice Network

Our quote of the day comes from Tim Hames, director general of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, via an excellent article on London by Charles Goodhart, which is well worth reading in its own right.

‘As far as the professional middle class is concerned London has become a form of gigantic black hole dragging everything into it. To choose to build a career anywhere else is, at best, to be deemed eccentric and, at worst, a disturbing indication of a lack of ambition. In England, it is often London or bust.’

Anyone familiar with our work on the Finance Curse will recognise this immediately. As one cross-country academic study put it, highly remunerated finance “literally bids rocket scientists away from the satellite industry.”

London’s gains (or the gains of a lucky segment of Londoners) are so often obtained at the expense of others in Britain.

We have often commented on the fact that the OECD, a club of rich countries, dominates rule-making on international tax while its much broader (and more legitimate) counterpart (perhaps one might say ‘competitor’), the UN Tax Committee, has been left in the shade. Not only has the OECD (and its member states) ensured that the UN Tax Committee is under-resourced and under-supported; it has also sought to intervene powerfully in the UNTC’s decision-making processes to make sure it doesn’t deviate from the OECD’s jealously guarded “international consensus” on international tax.

They’ve just had a meeting in Geneva, which Martin Hearson has analysed here.

We’re going to highlight – perhaps a tad mischievously – one short paragraph from his report, as a teaser to invite you to read on.

“Unusually, the record of the discussion identifies the dissenters as the Chinese, Brazilian and Indian members of the committee. It is worth noting that none of these three individuals are still members of the committee.”

Continue reading “UN Tax Committee meeting: dissenters absent?” →

From Micah Challenge in Australia, an event that comes ahead of the G20 world leaders’ meeting in Brisbane due on November 15 and 16. They introduce it in their press release:

“On Saturday 8 November, hundreds of concerned Australians dressed as corporate accountants will transform part of Brisbane’s CBD into a tax evader’s paradise of palm trees, mocktails, beach chairs and briefcases to shed light on the issue of multinational tax dodging.”

See more on Facebook.

N.B. The Tax Justice Network apologises for the use of an image of a palm tree in this article to represent tax havenry. The palm tree trope is widely used across media to associate international tax abuse largely or exclusively with small tropical islands whose populations are predominantly non-white and/or Black-majority. Evidence shows that the vast majority of international tax abuse is driven by rich OECD countries like the UK, US, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – yet it is small island nations that are often targeted by international policymakers while rich OECD countries are afforded exemptions. This colonial and structurally racist situation is bolstered by the use of the palm tree/island trope in media coverage of tax abuse. While the Tax Justice Network took the internal decision years ago to ban the use of the palm tree trope in our publications, we have kept our past uses of the trope up in order to be transparent about our past actions, rather than erase them, and to reaffirm our commitment to reject the trope going forward.

Here’s a headline (see picture) that should send ripples across the whole of Africa. Kenya’s Business Daily reports that the Kenyan government is considering plans to withdraw tax exemptions granted to foreign investors, including ten year tax holidays on corporate profits and ten year withholding tax holidays on repatriated dividends and other remittances. Continue reading “Are Kenyan tax holidays over?” →

A new (preliminary) report from the Tax Justice Network

‘The end of bank secrecy?’
Bridging the gap to effective automatic information exchange

Leading finance ministers are meeting in Berlin this week to initiate a new global standard for the automatic information exchange of tax data.

In a preliminary report,[1] Tax Justice Network evaluates the OECD’s common reporting standard, due to be enshrined in a new multilateral competent authority agreement at the Berlin summit.

Report authors Markus Meinzer and Andres Knobel[2] argue that the new global standard will not end bank secrecy, but it is a first step towards rolling it back. Continue reading “The End of Bank Secrecy? A new TJN report” →

FEMINIST LEGAL STUDIES QUEEN’S and

WOMEN FOR TAX JUSTICE and

FEM TAX INTERNATIONAL

CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST IN PRESENTING PAPERS
International Women’s Day Conference: Women and Tax Justice at Beijing+20: Taxing and Budgeting for Sex Equality

Continue reading “Call for Papers: Women and Tax Justice Conference at Beijing+20, Ontario, March 2015” →

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In the October 2014 Taxcast: never mind social welfare, how much is corporate welfare costing us? Across the US they’re going to start publishing the tax breaks and subsidies, and we take a look at the latest research in the UK. Also: Ireland announces it’ll abolish the so-called ‘Double Irish’ tax dodge after the EU Commission finds Apple’s tax deal is ‘illegal state aid’. But what will they replace it with? Australians discover the true state of the tax contributions made by their top companies and Tax Justice Network Africa makes history by taking the Kenyan government to court in an unprecedented case over a treaty with the tax haven of Mauritius.

‘we constantly have this debate about social welfare claimants shouldn’t be given benefits unless they have responsibilities, well may be we need to say the same thing about corporate welfare, that corporate welfare claimants shouldn’t be given assistance unless they behave responsibly” – Dr Kevin Farnsworth

Featuring: Tax Justice Network Director John Christensen, Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First www.GoodJobsFirst.org and the University of York’s Dr Kevin Farnsworth. (Dr Farnsworth’s research on direct corporate welfare in the UK has not yet been released but as soon as it is we will give further details).

Produced and presented by @Naomi_Fowler for the Tax Justice Network.

On the move? You can download to listen offline here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/taxcast/Taxcast_Oct_2014.mp3

You can subscribe to the Taxcast either by emailing naomi [at] taxjustice.net to be added to the mailout list or via our rss feed http://taxcast.libsyn.com/rss

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In his new book (only available in French at this stage) Belgian journalist Eric Walravens explores how tax wars within the European Union are destroying attempts to create fair markets. The subtitle says it all: Enquête Sur Un Chantage Qui Ruine Nos États translates as Investigation into a threat that is ruining our States. Continue reading “New book – Fiscal Dumping: Enquête Sur Un Chantage Qui Ruine Nos États” →

We recently blogged about Colombia’s decision to blacklist Panama because of its hostile role as tax haven for all sorts of dirty, criminal and corrupt Colombian drugs money. We also noted that Panama had the temerity to be outraged.

Now, from PanAm Post, something that really should stick in the craw:

“Recently, the Santos administration placed Panama, a traditional Colombian ally, on its list of international tax havens. Panama’s inclusion on this list, however, should not be considered a negative. Panamanian officials should be flattered to have been recognized for their respect for private property, unlike the vultures in other Latin-American countries. . . the Colombian government behaves like vultures, scavenging at resources that don’t belong to them.”

Continue reading “Panama voices call it “Badge of Honor” to be called a tax haven” →

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A plucky group of Occupy activists are legally occupying Parliament Square in London, but face surprising levels of harassment by British police. Here is a short video about the occupation, in which the protesters highlight the flags of British tax havens flying across the street from Parliament – illustrating the closer relations between the U.K. and such notorious tax havens as Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands, Gibraltar, the Turks & Caicos Islands, and so on. (Read about the British connection here.) Continue reading “Occupy protest highlights role of British tax havens” →

Call for papers for a Research Workshop

SHOULD NATION STATES ‘COMPETE’? Continue reading “2015 Research Workshop: Call for Papers – Should Nation States ‘Compete’?” →

In recent years we’ve been talking a lot about ‘competitiveness’ from the perspective of whole nation states. There’s a whole lot of nonsense that’s talked on this subject, and a whole lot of unnecessary damage caused to economies in the name of ‘competitiveness. Our blog about Bono and Ireland a few days ago was just the latest in our thinking in this area. There’s a whole lot more on this issue here.

Now here’s a fascinating article from September Continue reading “The myth of competitiveness: how to build a fairer city” →

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By Gail Bradbrook, a TJN supporter who was at the Occupy protest:

“There is currently an occupation in Parliament Square, England, in protest at the capture of democracy by financial interests; a feature of what we at TJN call the Finance Curse.
TJN’s director, John Christensen, was amongst the speakers yesterday, with Tax Justice a major theme. A host of other expert speakers and workshops are happening, focussed on key themes such as inequality, public services and the environment. More information and photos are here and here.
I’ve been there for a couple of days, and seen firsthand the treatment of the peaceful gathering and protesters.
There has been ludicrously tight enforcement of bylaws designed specifically to prevent Occupy-style demonstrations after the first occupation three years ago, which was so successful in highlighting major issues of our time. (The byelaws had to be lightened for Parliament Square after they were legally challenged).
Protestors have been asked to stop sitting on pizza boxes because they count as “sleeping equipment.” We have been prevented from sleeping, our banners, tarpaulins and loud hailers have been confiscated. Other recent protests *have* been allowed to gather in this space with banners and loud hailers, but not Occupy Democracy; instead a round the clock watch of 30 Police have deployed tactics in a clear attempt to drain our energy.
Nevertheless, the protestors are in good spirits and ask anyone who can to come down and join in. We’d also love your help in sharing what is happening through social media, etc. There has been what feels like a media blackout, save for a less than helpful article in the Guardian.
The Finance curse also talks about the capture of the media. In a spectacular example of this, can you imagine an event where at night time, once the tourists aren’t around to see and in front of our iconic symbol of democracy, this level of intimidatory policing is used… without a word spoken about it in major news channels?

John Christensen adds:

I spent all day Sunday in Parliament Square and watched at first hand the constant harassment by British police officers and ‘heritage wardens’. Both groups seemed oblivious to the fact that the square is primarily an open forum for public democracy rather than nice area of lawn to provide tourists with photo opportunties.

I saw at first hand the police arrest an Occupy activist who had cut a piece of string on the the perimeter of the lawn which appeared to serve no purpose other than to deter people from joining the discussion.

Like other speakers, I was not allowed to use amplification equipment during my talk, and had to compete with noise from police helicopters, church bells, and unsilenced cars and motorcycles. I have attended other events at Parliament Square in recent years at which amplification equipment was allowed. The police were advised by Occupy’s George Barda of this inconsistency, but were adamant they would seize any equipment used for voice amplification.

I watched police officers harassing Occupy Activists who wanted to use plastic tarpaulins to protect their kit and as a groundsheet for sitting on.

I witnessed a huge and expensive over-policing effort which was clearly intended to deter others from joining the peaceful discussions and provoke retaliation from the participants. Happily, the latter kept their cool and avoided giving the police the opportunities to arrest they were clearly gagging for.

All this happened, ironically, at an event protesting the loss of democracy in Britain.

I think the rest of the world needs to wake up to how far the UK has gone down the road to losing even a semblance of democracy. As Gail notes above, the Finance Curse, which I spoke about yesterday at Parliament Square, also includes erosion of press freedom. This is clearly the case in Britain, where most of the media is owned and controlled by five media barons, many extensive users of tax havens, and where the BBC has long since lost its mojo (on the BBC, also see this.)

Wending my way home last night I couldn’t help feeling ashamed at living in a country which brags about having the Mother of Parliaments, when in reality democracy has become a sham.

British newspapers are today reporting a major step forward for the First Tax Mark, with energy giant SSE – the UK’s second larget energy supplier – becoming the first FTSE 100 company to be awarded the Fair Tax Mark. Continue reading “Energy giant SSE awarded Fair Tax Mark for tax transparency” →

We’ve written a fair bit about tax treaties in the past few days, and have also updated and slightly expanded our tax treaties page. Now, in the spirit of the week, we offer a guest blog from Martina Neuwirth of the Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation (VIDC,) highlighting a study of Austrian tax treaties by Julia Braun and Daniel Fuentes, published in April.

Continue reading “Austria’s tax treaties: reducing developing countries’ revenues?” →

Guest blog from the Global Alliance for Tax Justice

Growing inequality within and between countries has become one of the defining issues of our age. It seems a week cannot go by without another damning report looking at the size and harmful consequences of this pervasive problem.
Continue reading “Fair taxes are key to a fair share for all” →

In 2012 we published a document entitled Inequality: you don’t know the half of it, in which we made the fairly obvious point that studies estimating inequality almost always fail to take offshore wealth (and income) adequately into account, and thus get things wrong at the top end of the income and wealth scale. We consulted a range of experts, and (as you can see) they all agreed with the basic idea.

We will be doing more work on this in due course, but we just came across this interesting anecdote from the Equality Trust, from May. Continue reading “A reminder of why everyone is underestimating inequality” →

Black testifies before U.S. Congress

One of a long line of “quotes of the day: this one from 2013, but still relevant today

The “race to the weakest supervisor” did not occur only within the U.S. Brooksley Born and a former senior SEC official have confirmed to me that UK regulators directly pitched U.S. financial firms to relocate operations to the City of London in order to obtain weaker supervision. “Fed lite” supervision was a competitive response to the FSA’s “reg lite” system of deliberately weak supervision.
The City of London became the most criminogenic environment in the world for financial fraud, which is why so many UK banks and units of foreign banks located in the City have caused the major scandals in the UK and globally.

Continue reading “Quote of the day: City of London and financial fraud” →

The EU Savings Tax Directive (EUSTD) has been the EU’s flagship transparency initiative since its introduction in 2003, and we have written about it on many occasions. It complements another EU transparency scheme called the Directive on Administrative Co-operation, which was beefed up this week, as the Wall St. Journal reported:

“European Union finance ministers agreed Tuesday on a far-reaching crackdown on tax evasion that will bring the bloc’s standards on par with global rules by 2017, although Austria is getting an extra year to build up a data-exchange system with its banks.”

Continue reading “EU Savings Tax Directive to be repealed?” →

Courtesy of New Internationalist

We’ve been (almost) biting our TJN tongues on Mr. Bono’s latest outburst since the weekend. We were waiting for this to come out. Cross-posted from Naked Capitalism, with permission. We’ve tweaked a couple of words here and there.

Bono: Tax Haven Salesman for the Celtic Paper Tiger

By Nicholas Shaxson

Paul Hewson, an Irish crooner who likes to go by the name of Bono, is well known for calling on citizens to spend their tax dollars on fighting poverty in Africa – then setting up fancy structures to dodge paying his own taxes. The British celebrity entertainer Graham Norton skewers Bono effectively: Continue reading “Bono: Tax Haven Salesman for the Celtic Paper Tiger” →

More and more very rich people. Click to enlarge

Credit Suisse’s new Global Wealth Report is out. As always, it contains a ream of useful data. For instance, it estimates that global household wealth reached US$263 trillion in mid-2014, up from $117 trillion in 2000:

“Between 2008 and mid-2014, mean wealth per adult grew by 26%; but the same period saw a 54% rise in the number of millionaires, a 106% increase in the number with wealth above USD 100 million, and more than double the number of billionaires.”

Most striking, perhaps, is the global wealth pyramid. Continue reading “Picture of the day: the global wealth pyramid” →

Ten years ago Jeffrey Robinson published a book about tax havens called The Sink, where he quotes a U.S. Customs official as saying of Panama:

“The country is filled with dishonest lawyers, dishonest bankers, dishonest company formation agents and dishonest companies registered there by those dishonest lawyers so that they can deposit dirty money into their dishonest banks. The Free Trade Zone is the black hole through which Panama has become one of the filthiest money laundering sinks in the world.”

Continue reading “Tax haven Panama: it’s time for blacklists and sanctions now” →

Quote of the day: the London Black Hole and the Finance Curse

UN Tax Committee meeting: dissenters absent?

Brisbane G20 event: be part of the world’s biggest mock tax haven

Are Kenyan tax holidays over?

The End of Bank Secrecy? A new TJN report

‘The end of bank secrecy?’
Bridging the gap to effective automatic information exchange