About Nick Shaxson
The Economist has noticed the Finance Curse
Regular readers will know that we have a permanent webpage entitled The Finance Curse explaining how countries with oversized financial sectors suffer a range of harms that are rather similar to a so-called Resource Curse that afflict resource-rich countries, and for a wide range of similar reasons. The Economist has recently written a long article entitled What’s Wrong with Finance, in which they basically
Read the full article…British tax havens fret about UK election
From the BVI Beacon, in the British Virgin Islands, a story about the UK’s General Election taking place today: “The biggest election issue pertaining to overseas territories is whether they each will be required to compile a publicly searchable register listing the beneficial owners of companies based in their jurisdictions. Leaders in the VI and other OTs [British Overseas Territories]
Read the full article…Edouard Perrin, PwC and the Dodgy Duchy of Luxembourg
The investigative British magazine Private Eye is currently running a short, incisive piece about the Dodgy Duchy of Luxembourg and PwC, which, given its importance, bears repeating in full. It runs as follows: TweetShare
The Tax Justice Research Bulletin 1(4)
Corrected: the earlier version referring to a Banque de France Report said “$8bn revenue loss” when it should have referred to an $8bn loss in tax base. The Tax Justice Research Bulletin By Alex Cobham. TJN (April 2015) – The Tax Justice Research Bulletin is a monthly series dedicated to tracking the latest developments in policy-relevant research on national and international
Read the full article…Jersey’s foundations law is fit for money launderers: scrap it
Foundations, like trusts and anonymous shell companies, are often used as secrecy vehicles for the purposes of money laundering, tax cheating, and much more. A while ago we pointed to an offshore promoter who had this to say about foundations: “Trusts are . . . tools of the rich used to stay rich and deny people access to their funds. .
Read the full article…Britain goes to the polls: the tax avoidance election
An interesting thing about the forthcoming UK election is that the subject of ‘tax avoidance’ has risen up the agenda so far and so fast. This guest blog briefly reviews the main parties’ manifestos, with a look out for their uses of the term. [We should add, by the way, that ‘tax avoidance’ is a tricky term to use, and is often
Read the full article…Why Gender Equality Requires More Tax Revenue
This is the third post this week on the topic of gender, and to celebrate our arrival in the modern world we have created a new topic page, where you will permanently be able to access news and analysis in this area. Now we’re delighted to host a guest blog by Diane Elson, Chair of the UK Women’s Budget Group and Emeritus
Read the full article…The Celtic Tiger: the Irish banking inquiry and a tale of two booms
Cross-posted from Fools’ Gold: One of our inaugural articles on this site was a post in March looking at the causes of the “Celtic Tiger” boom in Ireland. It contained a striking graph and a wealth of analysis suggesting strongly that what caused the boom was, above all, Ireland’s accession to the EU single market, rather than its supposedly ‘competitive’ corporate tax policies. After all,
Read the full article…Euro Trade unions spell out tax justice demands
This, from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) dates from March 10th, but it remains fresh. It contains some excellent tax justice recommendations – including one surprising and interesting one, which we’ll highlight in bold text: TweetShare
Cayman implicated in fishy Saudi deal
From the Financial Times: “Mr Foxley says he discovered gifts to Saudi military officials and illicit payments routed through the Cayman Islands.” For background, the article begins: “The UK government is fighting to keep secret details of how it handled allegedly corrupt transactions related to a contract to equip Saudi Arabia’s national guard.” TweetShare
How do tax wars affect women?
Cross-posted from Fools’ Gold: From the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, a post related to a landmark meeting in Lima on tax justice and human rights: “The current “race to the bottom” in which tax competition among developing countries takes place to attract corporate and foreign direct investment is having a negative impact on government budgets needed to finance
Read the full article…Is Singapore censoring critics of its tax haven status? Well, perhaps . . .
On April 30th we wrote a blog entitled Singapore spin: “we are not a tax haven.” They all say that. Then, this morning a news aggregator service provided us with this titillating tidbit: So we clicked on the link, to find this: TweetShare
Two new reports challenge the OECD’s work on corporate tax cheating
The OECD, the club of rich countries that dominates international tax, is running a project known as Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) which is supposed to fix some of the gaping holes in the international tax system. As we all know, transnational corporations (TNCs) are running rings around even the best-resourced tax authorities, and the OECD, responding to pressure from governments and civil society,
Read the full article…How do the UK parties’ promises on tax measure up on gender equality?
Ahead of the UK General Election due on May 7th, we are delighted to post a guest blog by Professor Sue Himmelweit of the Women’s Budget Group. The blog explains clearly just how important these issues are, and it also soon becomes clear that although this is a UK-focused blog, it has obvious implications for all countries. Clearly, these issues also mesh very
Read the full article…Avaaz in legal challenge to UK over Liechtenstein amnesty and HSBC scandal
From the Financial Times: “The UK tax authority faces a potential judicial review over its handling of the evasion scandal involving HSBC’s Swiss subsidiary, it emerged on Thursday. Lawyers acting for the international campaign group Avaaz have sent HM Revenue & Customs a letter asking for details of its decision to allow hundreds of suspected tax evaders to make use of an
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