About Alex Cobham
ICRICT ‘roadmap’ for taxing multinationals
The Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) has launched a ‘roadmap’ for taxing multinationals. This important intervention not only confirms the failure of current tax rules to deliver fair outcomes internationally, but sets the course for a specific alternative that would significantly strengthen fiscal sovereignty for countries at all income levels: unitary taxation with formulary apportionment.
Read the full article…Identifying and reducing illicit financial flows: collaborate with us!
The UN Sustainable Development Goals agreed globally in 2015 includes a target, for the first time, to reduce illicit flows. Three years later, however, the process to identify appropriate and sufficiently robust indicators is still ongoing. Meanwhile, policy processes and advocacy efforts are themselves held back by a lack of consensus on the most robust estimates. At the same time,
Read the full article…Call for papers: TJN annual conference #tjn18
#tjn18 PARADISE LOST? DESIGUALDAD E INJUSTICIA FISCAL (INEQUALITY AND TAX INJUSTICE) Lima, 13-14 June 2018 Download this call for papers: Spanish / English. Tax is a crucial tool for challenging inequalities, redistributing incomes and raising revenue for public spending. But the sovereignty of states in pursuing such policies is comprehensively undermined by the ability of elites and multinational companies to hide
Read the full article…Blacklisting the EU: Paradise lost?
On December 5 the EU will be publishing a list of jurisdictions that it considers to be non-cooperative in international tax matters. Today, we name the jurisdictions that we evaluate as meeting their published criteria, in a report co-authored with Wouter Lips of Ghent University and published at Open Data for Tax Justice. This will not be the first time that
Read the full article…Bad week for the big four
Last week was a bad week for the big four accountancy firms. These companies, which have for years marketed themselves as technocratic advisors to both governments and business, are seeing more exposure for the role they have played in driving the offshore economy, tax abuse, and the emptying of government treasuries around the world. Firstly, the Paradise Papers revealed more
Read the full article…Big Four accounting firms are key drivers of tax haven use, new research says
As scandals emerge from the Paradise Papers, the Big Four accountancy firms seem to have managed to stay largely out of the spotlight once again. But research released today shows that scrutiny of their practices is justified in the public interest. The new study is authored by Dr Chris Jones and Dr Yama Temouri of Aston Business School and the
Read the full article…Tax justice, the new Washington consensus?
I had the honour of giving a keynote address at the World Bank/International Monetary Fund annual meetings on 15th October 2017, for an event entitled ‘Technical challenges and solutions for taxing wealth in developing countries’ – which gave the impression that a new Washington consensus on tax justice may be emerging. My slides and the video, kindly provided by the
Read the full article…New release of global tax data
If you were working on tax as a development issue in the early 2000s, not only were you a lonely figure but you were also faced with some of the most pathetic cross-country data imaginable. For a 2005 paper (which introduced the 4 Rs of tax, inter alia), I tried to put together a comprehensive picture of tax revenues – only
Read the full article…Beginning of the end for the arm’s length principle?
The European Commission has released a statement which could well signal the beginning of the end for the OECD’s international tax rules, and the arm’s length principle on which they are based. The current rules, which date to decisions taken at the League of Nations in the inter-war years, are based on the assumption that the ‘right’ price for a trade
Read the full article…KPMG and the false objectivity of the ‘Big Four’
This is cross-posted from Huffington Post, South Africa. It’s time to recognise the big four firms for what they are – or we’ll continue getting stung, says economist and Chief Executive of the Tax Justice Network, Alex Cobham. And so another international firm providing ‘professional services’ has thrown its reputation away, revealed to have taken enormous fees in South Africa
Read the full article…New UN tax handbook: Lower-income countries vs OECD BEPS
The UN has just released an updated edition of its United Nations Handbook on Selected Issues in Protecting the Tax Base of Developing Countries. While technical in style and cautious in approach, the UN tax handbook identifies a range of issues in which the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) process has failed to deliver for lower-income countries –
Read the full article…The Brexit tax haven threat – rescinded?
Back in January, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (the finance minister), Philip Hammond, used an interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag to raise what has become known as the Brexit tax haven threat: if the EU doesn’t give the UK a good deal, the UK will lead a race to the bottom to undermine the EU on
Read the full article…Launch of international research collaboration, #AltAusterity
Today is the launch of #AltAusterity, a new, international research collaboration of which Tax Justice Network is a partner. The project aims to stimulate public debate on the subject of austerity though high quality research. It is a response to the lack of evidence which has underpinned the current policy agenda on austerity. The project comes together following a December,
Read the full article…EU-US tax war comes to the G20
The Juncker/Tusk letter of 4 July setting out common positions for the EU at the G20 throws down a direct challenge to the Trump administration, on Tax Justice Network priorities in particular – dealing with tax avoidance, tax evasion and anonymous ownership of companies, trusts and foundations. TweetShare
Redistributive hypocrisy: The growing dominance of tax haven USA
We’re delighted to bring you a guest blog by Lukas Hakelberg, a researcher from the University of Bamberg – one of our partners in the EC-funded COFFERS project. The blog outlines the motivation and key findings of a study by Lukas and a colleague, Max Schaub. We’ve been raising the alarm about the global impact of ‘Tax Haven USA’ as the
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