About John Christensen
UK coalition government driven by corporation tax cutters
The minority UK government elected last week is scrambling to agree a ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with a tiny party from Northern Ireland called the DUP (originally the Democratic Unionist Party). The DUP has attracted considerable attention in the past 24 hours because of its Protestant fundamentalist religious values and general social conservatism. TJN would like to point out the
Read the full article…Public country-by-country reporting: it’s not about costs or trade secrets
A guest blog authored by Matti Ylonen [University of Helsinki and Aalto University Business School]. The European Parliament is currently debating a proposal for public country-by-country reporting (CBCR), and the vote was recently postponed to later in June. Under the original proposal of the European Commission, the reporting requirement would be restricted only for Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) with an annual turnover
Read the full article…How Global Audit Firms Are Using Their Lobbying Clout to Dilute Sarbanes-Oxley Reforms
The dirty world of tax evasion and avoidance involves all sorts of unpleasant and anti-social characters, none more so than the professional enablers who devise avoidance schemes, market these schemes to their clients, lobby governments for special treatments and permissive laws, and generally play the role for tax dodgers that Tom Hagen played for The Godfather. TweetShare
Evading Tax and Avoiding Tax Evasion: for decades British governments have shied away from tackling cross border crime
Guest blog authored by Dr Michael Woodiwiss (Arts and Cultural Industries, University of the West of England) and Dr Mary Alice Young (Bristol Law School, University of the West of England) In the 1920s, an embryonic tax collecting organisation was steadily growing in the US. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was an agency ignored by the majority of Americans. However,
Read the full article…Sweden’s recipe for success: high taxes, strong unions, and equal distribution of wealth
While recent elections in France, U.K. and the U.S.A. have shown the results of globalisation gone bad, Sweden has successfully adapted its development model to make globalisation work for the majority of its people. TweetShare
Forthcoming book: Tax Havens and International Human Rights Law
Tax havens cause enormous damage, not least because they block governments from fulfilling their human rights obligations. When rich people and powerful businesses evade paying taxes by using offshore tax havens they deprive states of the revenues they need to deliver on their commitments to provide education, health, justice and security. In this forthcoming book, Isle of Man-based lawyer Paul
Read the full article…Paying a ‘Fair Share’: new brief on taxing multinational companies
In this new brief just published by the Sheffield Political Economics Research Institute authors John Mikler and Ainsley Elbra address the issue of global corporate tax avoidance and consider how multinational corporations can be made to pay their fair share of tax. TweetShare
Coming Soon: The Spider’s Web – a film about Britain’s tax haven empire
#RogueLondon Film maker Michael Oswald and TJN’s John Christensen have co-produced a new film about Britain’s tax haven empire. Titled The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire, the film is ready for release. It draws heavily on Nick Shaxson’s ground-breaking book Treasure Islands and uses historical footage to show how successive British governments have put tax havenry at the heart of
Read the full article…Research shows UK’s Finance Curse grip tightening in next five years
Britain’s Trade Unions Congress has published projections showing the increasingly unbalanced growth of the UK economy. As you can see from this map, economic activity is skewed in the direction of England’s south-east region, which includes London. It’s forecast to produce 40.1 percent of the UK’s gross domestic product by 2022. Given the importance of the City of London’s offshore
Read the full article…President Trump visits La-La-Laffer Land
Taken as a whole, the tax plans just announced by US President Donald Trump, which include abolition of the inheritance tax, could represent the largest tax cut for billionaires and millionaires in US history. According to the President, this will stimulate growth and job creation. There’s no evidence to support this; in fact the evidence suggests the exact opposite. TweetShare
New film: The Price of Fairness
This new film, which features TJN Director John Christensen, explores the notion that human beings have an evolutionary tendency towards selfish behaviour and asks whether the widespread dislike of inequality is rooted in the human need for cooperation. TweetShare
The problems with measuring tax systems
The following blog by TJN’s Nicholas Shaxson (currently on a book writing sabbatical) was originally posted on the SPERI blog and is re-posted here with permission. In debates about tax policy we need to de-emphasise the role of economics and measurement and rekindle the politics TweetShare
Ten years on, dodgy debt continues to threaten global chaos
In early September 2017, ten years after the collapse of UK bank Northern Rock, TJN will be publishing a special edition of Tax Justice Focus, guest edited by Professor Daniel Mügge (University of Amsterdam) which draws on fresh research from the EU-funded Enlighten programme. In this article Professor Mugge argues that faced with intractable problems of rising debt, and the
Read the full article…Brexit Britain: what does the public think about tax haven plans?
In January 2017 Britain’s finance minister Philip Hammond and prime minister Theresa May signalled that Britain could deepen its role as a tax haven if it left the European Single Market post-Brexit. TweetShare
