About Alex Cobham
Tax Justice Annual Conference 2017, 5-6 July: Final Programme
#tjn17 GLOBAL TAX JUSTICE AT A CROSSROADS SOUTHERN LEADERSHIP AND THE CHALLENGES OF TRUMP AND BREXIT City, University of London, 5-6 July 2017 The Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs (AABA), City, University of London (CityPERC), and the Tax Justice Network (TJN), are delighted to confirm the programme for next week’s annual conference – the latest in an annual event
Read the full article…Empty OECD ‘tax haven’ blacklist undermines progress
The OECD has today published a list of “non-cooperative jurisdictions” on tax ahead of the leaders G20 leaders summit in Hamburg, and hailed the “great progress” being made on international efforts to tackle tax evasion. The list only contains one country, Trinidad and Tobago. The Tax Justice Network condemns the empty ‘tax haven’ blacklist. Far from the success which is
Read the full article…The BVI: Responsible for worldwide tax losses of $37.5 billion a year
An extraordinary report by consultants Capital Economics, for BVI Finance, claims that the British Virgin Islands are responsible for $1.5 trillion of assets invested around the world, and that these result in 2.2 million jobs and $15 billion in tax revenue. A better approximation would be that the BVI imposes global tax losses of $37.5 billion every year. TweetShare
New multilateral instrument to limit damage done by tax treaties
Today sees the signing ceremony of a new multilateral instrument (MLI) to limit the extent to which bilateral tax treaties create the conditions for large-scale multinational tax avoidance. The OECD’s Pascal Saint-Amans told the Financial Times (£) that “treaty shopping will be killed”. Treaty shopping describes the practice of multi-national companies in comparing and selecting which jurisdictions offer them treaties with the
Read the full article…Tax Justice Network warns at the UN against subversion of Sustainable Development Goals
Last week the Tax Justice Network director Alex Cobham was invited to the United Nations in New York to address the ECOSOC Financing for Development Forum. Here are his remarks, which highlight a major threat to the Sustainable Development Goals target to reduce illicit financial flows. And what’s that threat? A concerted effort to remove multinational tax avoidance from the
Read the full article…Tax Justice Network annual conference, July 2017: Preliminary programme and registration
#tjn17 GLOBAL TAX JUSTICE AT A CROSSROADS SOUTHERN LEADERSHIP AND THE CHALLENGES OF TRUMP AND BREXIT City, University of London, 5-6 July 2017 Tax justice stands at a crossroads: after a period of sustained but partial progress, 2017 brings with it a strong risk of deterioration. This year’s annual conference will evaluate the extent of recent advances in international financial
Read the full article…Campaign victory disarms big tobacco’s lobby front in developing countries
Update: the Financial Times has covered the great news. Below is a press release cross-posted from Tax Tobacco for Life, about a major campaign victory, which could save hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives in some of the poorest countries in the world. Here’s the quick story. Big Tobacco has targeted lower-income countries as the only growth markets of
Read the full article…Developing countries’ access to CbCR: Guess who’s (not) coming to OECD dinner
It’s said that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Well, the OECD has just made available the list of activated relationships to automatically exchange country-by-country reports between countries. They use big figures like 700 relationships, but don’t get fooled by those numbers – simply look at the image below to see who really has access to
Read the full article…Two days left to end financial secrecy in the UK’s Overseas Territories?
UK parliamentarians have the opportunity to take historic action over the next two days, ending decades of financial secrecy in the UK’s Overseas Territories. As Parliament closes down before the General Election which will take place on the 8th June, a lot of ongoing business is now at risk. A range of Bills that have been through multiple committee stages
Read the full article…Open Cayman: Reputation, rhetoric and reality
By Alex Cobham Last week I took up the kind invitation of the government of Cayman to speak at their conference on ‘Tax Transparency in the Global Financial Services Ecosystem’, and to meet with staff from the monetary authority, statistics office and corporate registry; and with a range of industry representatives including those from the compliance association and Cayman Finance.
Read the full article…Panama Papers: Who were the big players?
The Panama Papers revealed a systemic challenge to global governance, in which the big players are major banks, multinationals and the biggest financial centres of all. Unsurprisingly, much of the coverage of the Panama Papers focused on juicy, individual stories: political conflicts of interest, criminal money laundering and HNWI tax evasion in exotic locations. But when you look at all
Read the full article…Call for papers (one week to go), plus studentship and job
Three pieces of news for tax justice researchers: Just one week left for abstract submission for our annual conference in July – last chance to get yours in for consideration! There’s a fantastic research post being advertised, to work with Prof. Dariusz Wojcik on global financial networks at Oxford; and An exciting studentship with Dr Kristian Laslett at Ulster University,
Read the full article…Estimating tax avoidance: New findings, new questions
By Alex Cobham There are now a range of estimates of the global scale of tax avoidance. These include: the $600 billion annual tax loss estimated by IMF researchers Crivelli et al. (2015; 2016), which divides roughly into $400 billion of OECD losses and $200 billion elsewhere; the $100 billion annual tax losses that UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2015 estimated for
Read the full article…Tax justice annual conference: Call for papers and registration
GLOBAL TAX JUSTICE AT A CROSSROADS SOUTHERN LEADERSHIP AND THE CHALLENGE OF TRUMP AND BREXIT City University London, 5-6 July 2017 Tax justice stands at a crossroads. After a period of sustained but partial progress, 2017 brings with it a strong risk of deterioration. In this year’s annual conference we will: TweetShare
Event: The Brexit tax haven threat, assessed
As part of a series of seminars looking at the future of public services, the Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU) and Tax Justice Network are organising a seminar entitled ‘The Brexit tax haven threat assessed’ to be held on Tuesday 14 March 2017, 2pm to 5 pm, HH103, University of Greenwich, SE10 9LS. The aim of this seminar is
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