About Nick Shaxson
Lima: TJN director Christensen speech on tax justice and human rights
From John Christensen, TJN’s director, a speech about tax justice and human rights. It begins like this: “Why the tax justice movement should embrace human rights. And vice versa The history of economic and social rights in most countries can be discovered in their tax codes. Tax is at the core of the social contract between citizens and state and between
Read the full article…Why must tax treaties starve developing countries of revenue?
Martin Hearson, who has just been at a parliamentary hearing in Denmark, asks a very good question about tax treaties and developing countries: why exactly is it necessary for them to insist on stiffing developing countries of tax revenue? TweetShare
Singapore spin: “we are not a tax haven.” They all say that
From the Twittersphere, our Director of Research: TweetShare
BBC still using ideological evidence on top UK income taxes
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Adam Smith and the British East India Company: a perspective on competitiveness
This blog was originally posted at Fools’ Gold, a project supported by TJN. Adam Smith was an arch-critic of the regime-hopping strategies of the exclusive stockholding corporations, the forerunners of today’s multinational corporations. The British East India Company, granted a Royal Charter, was supposed to be acting on behalf of the sovereign to meet the country’s commercial objectives. The free hand
Read the full article…Shareholder value and the fiduciary duty of company directors: a view from Israel
This is our second Israel-related blog in the past week. From TJN-Israel and the Corporate Responsibility Institute at the College of Law and Business, a new report looking at a subject dear to our hearts: whether or not company directors are bound by their fiduciary duties to avoid tax. TweetShare
The Offshore Wrapper: a week in tax justice #59
Our quirky weekly news round-up from the topsy-turvy world of tax havens. The piratical Duchy of Luxembourg charges journalist over LuxLeaks What does Jean-Claude Juncker think of this? Luxembourg, the country he led for 18 years and steered in the direction of becoming one of Europe’s biggest and nastiest tax havens, has charged journalist Edouard Perrin with “violating business confidentiality”. Not content with throwing
Read the full article…Big Pharma companies: extracting wealth from every angle they can find
(Updated with a reference to Google’s scary “Patent Purchase Promotion” initiative.) From the Wall St. Journal, a story entitled Pharmaceutical Companies Buy Rivals’ Drugs, Then Jack Up the Prices: “On Feb. 10, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. bought the rights to a pair of life-saving heart drugs. The same day, their list prices rose by 525% and 212%. Neither of the drugs, Nitropress
Read the full article…HSBC whistleblower Falciani, on tax havens and whistleblowing
This video comes from The Guardian: “HSBC files whistleblower Hervé Falciani: ‘This money comes from mafia, http://premier-pharmacy.com/product-category/anti-inflammatories/ drug traffickers, blood diamonds and tax evasion’ “ Alternatively, you can watch it here. TweetShare
Working people pay taxes – corporations must pay their share!
Public service trade unions and the Global Alliance for Tax Justice invite members to join in marching this May Day under the banner “Working people pay taxes – corporations must pay their share!” TweetShare
Transfer pricing: what developing countries are doing, China edition
Last December Krishen Mehta wrote us a longish article entitled Developing Countries and Tax – Ten Ways Forward. It outlines a series of measures that developing countries can consider as they seek to curb tax cheating by multinational corporations. This blog is really just a pointer to an article in the publication China Briefing entitled In Curbing Transfer Pricing, China Moves Beyond
Read the full article…How to make tax systems more environmentally sustainable
Update: head of Glencore calls for all fossil fuel subsidies to be phased out. (There’s a catch, but we can simply ignore the catch.) In January we wrote an article entitled Do not listen to Big Oil’s whining for tax cuts. It contained a lot of generic reasons not to shower tax subsidies on local oil producers as soon as the
Read the full article…The Tax Justice Network podcast, April 2015
In the April 2015 Tax Justice Network podcast: How just are our tax systems towards women? A Taxcast chat with award-winning filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, about his new Russell Brand film The Emperor’s New Clothes. Plus: one of the US’ biggest corporations (and tax avoiders) is repatriating billions from offshore, paying its taxes and re-focusing on good old manufacturing again – and investors love them. And
Read the full article…Tax competitiveness: was Charles Tiebout joking?
From the Fools’ Gold project on ‘competitiveness’: Do nations or states ‘compete’ with each other in a meaningful way? We have already explored the thinking of Paul Krugman, Adam Smith, Robert Reich, and the Tax Justice Network on this question. Their answers are, to summarise broadly: ‘no – or at least not in the way people commonly suppose.’ TweetShare
The Rumble Down Under: democracy v multinationals in Australia
This is just one part of what one might call the ‘mega-capture’ of political processes, around the world, by the Big Four accountancy firms. TweetShare
