About Nick Shaxson
Rangers lose the big tax case: what now?
The Offshore Game, a TJN-supported site dedicated to looking at tax havenry in sport, published this long article about Scotland’s Rangers football club yesterday. It is important not just for the interests involved, but because of principles at stake, not least concerning discretionary trusts (see our primer on trusts here.) Update: UK barrister Jolyon Maugham has commented on this case, on Radio
Read the full article…Fifty Shades of Tax Dodging: how EU helps support unjust global tax systems
A major new report written by civil society organisations in 14 countries across the EU, co-ordinated by Eurodad. Fifty Shades of Tax Dodging: the EU’s role in supporting an unjust global tax system TweetShare
TJN unveils its new Financial Secrecy Index
Today the Tax Justice Network launches the 2015 Financial Secrecy Index, the biggest ever survey of global financial secrecy. This unique index combines a secrecy score with a weighting to create a ranking of the secrecy jurisdictions and countries that most actively promote secrecy in global finance. The full press release is here. The Financial Secrecy Index is here. For the
Read the full article…Luxembourg – how’s that tax cleanup going?
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NYT on The Price We Pay: exacting, disturbing, enlightening, must be heard
From the New York Times: “Throughout the world, inequality is soaring to new heights, and the wealth of nations, which once provided prosperity to the majority, has gone missing.” So begins the narration for “The Price We Pay,” Harold Crooks’s exacting and disturbing documentary about offshore tax havens for multinational corporations, the growing concentration of money within a narrow minority,
Read the full article…How the wealth managers do it: an in-depth investigation
The Atlantic is carrying a truly fascinating article entitled Inside the Secretive World of Tax-Avoidance Experts. And this researcher, Brooke Harrington, went to town on it: “Given the little that is known about the profession and its role in global inequality, it seemed imperative to learn more about how wealth managers pull off this sleight of hand. . . . taking advantage of
Read the full article…Will civil society shake up the world of tax treaties?
When a multinational company makes a cross-border investment, the relevant tax treaty between the two countries will generally sort out which country gets to tax which part of the ensuing activity and income streams. (Read more about tax treaties here.) A key question is this: how do the ensuing taxing rights over the ensuing income get shared out between a) the country receiving the inward investment (which
Read the full article…Finance Uncovered: a proper introduction
We’ve linked to Finance Uncovered on several occasions — not least this week — but never as comprehensively as this. From the Byline website, a proper introduction, which nicely illustrates our operating model. Introducing Finance Uncovered Global finance has no borders – neither do we. Finance Uncovered is a network of investigative journalists and campaigners from over 50 countries. Nick Mathiason explains how we
Read the full article…The Offshore Wrapper: a week in tax justice #70
MTN’s Mauritian Billions A group of investigative journalists in Africa working with Finance Uncovered, a TJN supported project have discovered that Africa’s largest mobile phone network, MTN, has been moving billions of Rand in revenue to the island of Mauritius. TweetShare
What will BEPS fix, and who will gain?
A guest blog by Sol Picciotto, co-ordinator of the BEPS Monitoring Group. What will BEPS fix, and who will gain? The launch this week of the final reports from the G20/OECD project on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) has sparked two frequently asked questions. The first is: can we give examples of methods used for tax dodging by multinationals
Read the full article…Seychelles: the ex-billionaire and the captured state
We’ve never laid down hard and fast definitions of the terms ‘tax haven’ or ‘secrecy jurisdiction’ because there’s so much to say about what makes these places tick, and no short definition captures the whole picture. But we offer this way of thinking about these places. Among other things, it says: “Secrecy jurisdictions tend to be ‘captured states’, where offshore financial services tends to
Read the full article…Finance Uncovered: how Africa’s biggest cell phone firm shifts billions offshore
From Finance Uncovered, a TJN-founded project, a press release about a story that is (among other things) front page of South Africa’s influential Mail & Guardian newspaper. Finance Uncovered reveals how Africa’s biggest cell phone firm shifts billions offshore The Finance Uncovered global network of investigative reporters have today published a cross-border investigation into South African telecoms giant MTN exposing how
Read the full article…How 1/8th of Moldova’s GDP vanished, via a Scottish council flat
From the BBC: “The UK is one of the easiest countries in the world to set up a company in, and some agents offer to do it in an hour, for as little as £25.” In standard parlance, this makes the UK an ‘efficient’ place to set up a company, reassuringly free of that pesky ‘red tape.’ All good stuff. TweetShare
On tax credits, economic misunderstandings and the poor
The UK economics writer Chris Dillow has an excellent post making some basic points about tax credits, following a recent speech by the UK’s finance minister (or “Chancellor”) George Osborne, where he says: “We simply can’t subsidise incomes with ever-higher welfare and tax credit bills the country can’t afford.” Which begs the question of who “we” and “the country” are.
Read the full article…So: what kinds of corporate tax schemes won’t BEPS stop?
There have been a few inquiries from people in the media looking at our (and others’) recent critiques of the OECD’s recently-released BEPS project proposals to tackle international corporate tax avoidance. One pertinent question is this: which schemes, specifically, won’t BEPS stop? Prof. Sol Picciotto, a TJN Senior Adviser and co-ordinator of the BEPS Monitoring Group, a network of tax justice groups
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