About Nick Shaxson
Tax Haven Netherlands takes over EU presidency. As if Juncker weren’t enough
From Social Europe: “As of this January 1, the Netherlands holds the Presidency of the European Union. This is a good occasion to put the spotlight on a well-kept Dutch secret: The Netherlands is one of the largest tax havens in Europe, indeed the world. While minister of finance Jeroen Dijsselbloem – better known as head of the Euro Group
Read the full article…Apple CEO Tim Cook: wilfully not understanding tax
From the Financial Times: “Apple’s chief executive said accusations the company was avoiding paying taxes by holding more than $180bn of its cash balances outside the US were “total political crap. Apple pays every tax dollar we owe”. To which there is a very simple answer. They don’t owe it because they dodged it. TweetShare
Time to investigate the Big 4 over the financial crash
A guest blog by Dr. Atul K. Shah, Senior Lecturer, Suffolk Business School. As background to this, it is useful to quote from the work of Prem Sikka, cited in Shah’s research: “Successive governments have failed to investigate the firms, or prosecute their partners. Instead, the partners of major accountancy firms are given peerages, knighthoods, public accolades and government consultancies, all funded by
Read the full article…Financial Secrecy Index – full technical database now available
On November 2nd we published the fourth edition of the Financial Secrecy Index (FSI,) the most comprehensive global survey of financial market secrecy which covers more than 100 jurisdictions. This unique index combines a secrecy score (according to 15 key indicators) with a weighting of each jurisdiction’s market share in the global financial services for non-residents. The index reveals that the world’s most
Read the full article…Wealth management: tax avoidance is just the tip of the iceberg
Recently we wrote a blog about some rather unique research carried out by Brooke Harrington, an Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School who trained to become a wealth manager in order to study it properly. This week, Naomi Fowler interviewed her for our latest Taxcast. We think it is worth pulling a couple of quotes out of that interview. Here is one: TweetShare
Panama thumbs its nose at transparency – again
We have on several occasions fingered Panama as a particularly recalcitrant secrecy jurisdiction: our recent Panama Narrative Report spills a fair number of beans in that respect. Its recalcitrance is perhaps hardly surprising, given the quantity of Colombian and Mexican drugs money believed to be sheltered there – to name just one part of the problem. Now, via Mark Morris, a list of conditions that
Read the full article…Tax havens and the role of multinationals running care services
Guest blog: an opportunity to Fight Tax Havens in the EU By Johannes Kananen, Thomas Wallgren, Matti Ylönen, and Matti Kohonen The EU’s new Directive on public procurement (2014/24/EU) is currently being implemented in many countries, and the fate of one small article in the directive may dictate the opportunities public authorities have to include tax and transparency-related criteria in the procurement
Read the full article…Lazonick: tax cheating is just part of Pfizer’s corrupt business model
Recently the U.S. pharma giant Pfizer announced a merger with the drugmaker Allergan, in a deal heavily motivated by tax cheating via a ‘corporate’ inversion – a corporate relocation to take advantage of (in this case Ireland’s) lax tax regime. Much has been said on the topic, with U.S. politicians rightly calling it a scandal and a disgrace. The company tried to
Read the full article…Jersey: the fall of a Finance-Cursed tax haven
A new article in the Guardian Long Reads series, entitled The fall of Jersey: how a tax haven goes bust. (Not as dramatic as this one, but still.) The article heavily features Jerseyman John Christensen, TJN’s Director (along with Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, who has been influential in TJN’s history.) Jersey’s financial sector has done very well out of offshore finance,
Read the full article…The chaser’s guide to tax havens: a simple 1,413-step guide
Some offshore humour for a Monday morning: The Chaser’s Guide to Tax Havens, from Australia. The magazine has an interesting history: “Ever since The Chaser started, back in 1999, we have strived to build our company on a solid foundation of inexplicable and highly technical tax losses.” Back to the guide to tax havens: perhaps our favourite section is this one – because it’s
Read the full article…Quote of the day – on Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘charitable donation’
For those who don’t know, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg this week pledged, on the birth of his daughter, to donate 99 percent of his billion-worth of Facebook stock to good causes. Which has generated adulation and love, from around the world: just look at the Great and the Good lining up to applaud him on his Facebook page. Our quote of the day
Read the full article…Shell companies: UK statement on public registers – and an animated video
A new announcement from the Joint Ministerial Council of the UK and its Overseas Territories – many of which are major global tax havens: “We agreed to hold beneficial ownership information in our respective jurisdictions via central registers or similarly effective systems. We discussed the details of how these systems should be implemented, including through technical dialogue between the Overseas Territories and UK
Read the full article…Kenya as a tax haven would be a ‘financial crime aircraft carrier’
Our quote of the day concerns a plan to turn Nairobi into a “regional finance hub” through the establishment of the Nairobi International Financial Centre (NIFC): “Anti-corruption campaigner John Githongo has warned that in this setting, the NIFC “would be like a financial crime aircraft carrier, self-contained and able to cause considerable damage”. Which is a good way to put it. To
Read the full article…New study: corporate tax cuts may have been ‘the greatest blunder’
The Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives has just published a new study entitled Do Corporate Income Tax Rate Reductions Accelerate Growth? It summarises: “This study examines the relationship between the Canadian corporate income tax (CIT) regime and various dimensions of economic growth. The author finds that CIT cuts have not only failed to lead to faster growth, but there is evidence to
Read the full article…Survey: corruption rife among accountants.
From Accountancy Age in the UK: “The research – by global job board CareersinAudit.com – quizzed 1696 accountants around the planet, including 400 in the UK, showed that 48% had either been pressurised (or knew of someone that had) by a manager or partner to ignore an adjustment that should have been made to a set of accounts. And four
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