About Nick Shaxson
New study: U.S. Fortune 500 cos have $2.1 trillion offshore
From Citizens for Tax justice, via email: “Today Citizens for Tax Justice and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund released, “Offshore Shell Games,” a new study which found that nearly three-quarters of Fortune 500 companies maintained at least one tax haven subsidiary in 2014, with just 30 companies accounting for 62 percent of earnings stashed offshore. All told, Fortune 500 companies
Read the full article…GATJ: OECD tweaks to tax rules for multinational corporations fall short on transparency, inclusivity
From the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, a press release on the OECD’s BEPS process, which we wrote about yesterday: “The Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ) is urgently calling for a United Nations-based follow-up process to the “flawed” OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project, in order to deliver an effective and transparent global system for taxing multinational corporations.
Read the full article…Press release: OECD’s BEPS proposals will not be the end of tax avoidance by multinationals
PRESS RELEASE EMBARGOED: 14:00 CET See this press release in pdf form here. See the BEPS Monitoring Group’s longer technical evaluation here (or in condensed form here.) See links to further statements by others below. OECD’s BEPS proposals will not be the end of tax avoidance by multinationals TweetShare
Belize and the curious tale of the British lord
Britons have been titillating themselves recently with some sordid but quite likely untrue allegations made against UK Prime Minister David Cameron by Lord Michael Ashcroft (whom in making the allegations may have been motivated by pique or revenge.) We won’t dignify these allegations by spelling them out, but we will note that Ashcroft’s considerable financial fortune has been partly tied up with financial activities in the tiny tax
Read the full article…World Bank president: corporate tax dodging ‘a form of corruption’
From a speech by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim: “Some companies use elaborate strategies to not pay taxes in countries in which they work, a form of corruption that hurts the poor.” That is a powerful statement from a powerful individual. This is indeed something that we’ve been arguing for many years. It’s a welcome speech, containing a number of other peaches,
Read the full article…Christian Aid: new Swissleaks analysis shows harm to developing countries
An important new analysis from Christian Aid. Note the pull-out quote highlighting the problems with the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard, or CRS. September 30 2015 NEW SWISSLEAKS ANALYSIS REVEALS HOW TAX HAVEN SECRECY HARMS DEVELOPING COUNTRIES New, detailed examination of the SwissLeaks files by Christian Aid working with the US-based Financial Transparency Coalition (FTC) graphically reveals the harm tax haven secrecy
Read the full article…How ‘competitive’ tax and incentive policies hurt small U.S. businesses
Cross-posted from the Fools’ Gold site: Recently we have written about how supposedly ‘competitive’ national policies on tax and the financial sector in Britain tend to favour large multinational firms over smaller, more locally-based ones, and how they also tend to lead to less competition in markets too. This is the result of what we sometimes call the “Competitiveness Agenda”, which pushes the
Read the full article…Pope Francis on inequality, tax evasion and corruption
Eric LeCompte of Jubilee USA Network has written a useful article on the occasion of Pope Francis’ visit to the United States, in which he’s highlighted some important historical quotes of his. For instance: “Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the
Read the full article…Switzerland: still the home of secret banking
There’s been a lot of press about Swiss banking secrecy being finished, because of certain improvements that have been made. We periodically issue reminders that this ain’t so, for many reasons. Just for instance: Swiss Banking Secrecy laws, in the spirit of the famous 1934 Swiss Banking Secrecy Law, remain firmly intact. If they really had turned over a new leaf, why
Read the full article…Developing countries and BEPS: an equal footing?
From Bloomberg BNA: “Since 2013, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] has been working on a 15-item BEPS action plan under Group of 20 authority with the aim of closing “loopholes” that allow multinationals to drastically reduce their taxes. Along the way, the project has faced criticism that it neglected developing countries.” TweetShare
The march of the international tax treaty arbitrators
From Martin Hearson, a (somewhat wonkish) post about tax treaties and developing countries, entitled The tax treaty arbitrators cometh: “There are lots of reasons why eliminating all forms of double taxation faced by cross-border investors is a sensible thing to try to do. It is what tax treaties are supposed to be for. But sometimes governments, especially in developing countries, might deliberately choose
Read the full article…Why a ‘competitive’ economy means less competition
From the Fools’ Gold site: The ‘competitiveness’ of a country can be taken to mean many things. Many people, such as Martin Wolf or Paul Krugman, have argued forcefully that it is a meaningless or dangerous concept. On another level it’s a question of language: you can make national ‘competitiveness’ mean whatever you like. But there is a very common
Read the full article…Country by country reporting: lessons from Finland
A guest blog by Henri Telkki, Finnwatch. This concerns country-by-country reporting, a concept explained here. The CbCR piloting of Finnish state-owned companies – lessons to learn Finland acted as a front-runner in tax transparency by requiring those companies where the state holds more than a 50% equity share to publish essential tax information on a country by country basis for the first time in
Read the full article…New Christian Aid poll: 70% believe ‘legal’ tax avoidance is wrong
From Business World in Ireland: “Only 36% of people trust multinational companies to provide accurate tax information, while 70% believe multinational tax avoidance schemes to be morally wrong even if they are legal according to a new . . . survey, conducted on behalf of the charity Christian Aid. According to the poll, Ireland’s international reputation also suffers as a consequence of our
Read the full article…OECD: too much finance hurts growth — more on latest paper supporting Finance Curse thesis
From The Guardian: “Countries with bigger banking sectors suffer weaker growth and worse inequality, according to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). After analysing 50 years of data across its 34 member-countries, economists at the Paris-based thinktank have found that having a large financial sector can slow economic growth, while its highly paid workers exacerbate
Read the full article…
