About Nick Shaxson
Switzerland rejects request from Argentina on leaked HSBC accounts
From Argentina’s La Nacion newspaper: “Switzerland has denied the Argentine judicial authorities information about 4,000 or so Argentine-owned bank accounts in Switzerland, saying that Argentina’s request had no solid foundation.” This concerns data revealed by an HSBC whistleblower, Hervé Falciani, which has caused a political storm in many countries and forced Falciani to go into hiding. TweetShare
Following the Money: French Banks’ Activities in Tax Havens
Update: the English version is coming soon; the French version is here. The following press release is published by Oxfam France; CCFD-Terre Solidaire; and Secours Catholique-Caritas. The accompanying study uses the first fully available public Country-by-Country reporting data from French banks following the implementation of CRD IV, the piece of EU legislation requiring banks to disclose this information. It shows that banks
Read the full article…KPMG: are they really masters of the universe?
A guest blog by Atul Shah of Suffolk Business School. Also published at Tax Research. Are KPMG really masters of the universe? The growing size and influence of Big 4 global accounting firms, and their supermarket of business consulting and advisory services, is generating alarm among scholars concerned about ethics, independence, and truth. Our research at Suffolk Business School has raised
Read the full article…The Multinational Enterprises (Financial Transparency) Bill
From the UK parliament, a motion that we noted in our previous blog on Oxfam’s new UK tax havens report, and which we strongly support: Multinational Enterprises (Financial Transparency): Ten Minute Rule Motion Caroline Flint That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require certain multinational enterprises to include, within their annual financial reporting, specified information prepared in accordance with the Organisation
Read the full article…Oxfam report: Ending the Era of Tax Havens
Back in June 2000, three years before TJN’s birth and at a time when nobody was talking about the issues, the charity Oxfam published a seminal document entitled Tax Havens: Releasing the hidden billions for poverty eradication. It was an important part of global tax justice history. We’re delighted that Oxfam has again been extremely active in the area, and now has produced an
Read the full article…Our corruption and tax havens workshop: new programme
We’ve updated the programme for our Corruption and Tax Havens workshop at City University, London, on April 28th and 29th. Great sessions in prospect including papers on the corruption driven by the UK’s financial secrecy network, on gender and human rights impacts, and on the role of professionals including the big four accounting firms. You can find the programme here, and embedded
Read the full article…Top rate income tax cuts: 89 percent go to men, 11 percent to women
From The UK’s Mirror newspaper: “If George Osborne [the UK Finance Minister] slashes the rate further in the Budget – from 45p to 40p for those on £150,000 or more – will put even more money in men’s pockets. Analysis by the Tax Justice Network found there are 339,000 people (284,000 men and 55,000 women) earning above that level. Cutting the rate
Read the full article…Why tax ‘competitiveness’ is like ice cream
From the Fools’ Gold blog: One of the core arguments of our Fool’s Gold project is that if you shower wealthy people and large corporations with goodies, two things happen. First, you may help them and you may be able to demonstrate some benefits, somewhere in the economy: such as improved performance for the stock options held by the executives at the multinationals concerned. Second, though,
Read the full article…“Squeaky clean” Cayman caught in the act – again
From the U.S. Department of Justice: “Cayman National Securities Ltd. (CNS) and Cayman National Trust Co. Ltd. (CNT), two Cayman Island affiliates of Cayman National Corporation . . . pleaded guilty to a criminal Information charging them with conspiring with many of their U.S. taxpayer-clients to hide more than $130 million in offshore accounts from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and to
Read the full article…Tax haven Panama: giving the world the “middle finger”
Stephen Sackur and the BBC’s Hard Talk programme have been talking to Panama’s Vice President Isabel de Saint Malo de Alvarado. (It’s only available to UK-based viewers, unfortunately.) She begins with a bout of self-congratulation about Panama, and Sackur responds with a wide number of allegations of corruption. He forces her to admit that Panama has been recalcitrant in this area. The most
Read the full article…International Women’s Day: tax justice is a feminist issue, every day.
Women’s Budget Group (UK): showing how gender issues can be addressed International Women’s Day: Tax Justice is a feminist issue, every day. By Liz Nelson On International Women’s Day, let’s remember that tax justice is a feminist issue – every day. We’d like to use today to signal some significant milestones and forthcoming opportunities for understanding and addressing the gendered impacts of tax abuse.
Read the full article…How do top rate income tax cuts affect women?
On International Women’s Day, this is the first of two blogs on the subject of tax justice and gender. The short answer to the question in our headline is that cuts to the top rate of income tax hit women particularly hard, not just because their disproportionate role in childcare and other family-related areas are hit by ensuing government spending cuts,
Read the full article…Taxing corporations: the Politics and Ideology of the Arm’s Length Principle
Last year we posted a presentation by Matti Ylönen looking at the politics of the international tax system. Now he has written us a guest blog, based on his paper co-authored with Teivo Teivainen, which was a co-winner of the Amartya Sen Prize in October 2015. Taxing corporations: the Politics and Ideology of the Arm’s Length Principle A guest blog
Read the full article…Switzerland’s financial secrecy brought under the human rights spotlight
Switzerland – arguably the world’s most important tax haven – may soon face scrutiny from the United Nations human rights system over its role in facilitating cross-border tax abuse. A coalition of civil society bodies has filed a submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW,) the UN body mandated to oversee compliance with women’s human
Read the full article…Google, Facebook and a gradual realignment to the post-BEPS landscape
Last week we wrote an article entitled Facebook ‘to pay more UK tax’. Let’s not get carried away, analysing an announcement by Facebook that it will restructure its operations so as to pay more tax in the UK. This follows earlier news (on which we also commented) that Google had reached a deal with the UK authorities to pay more
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