About Nick Shaxson
How Swiss banks moved their evasion experts to Latin America
An interview with Swiss banking whistleblower Stéphanie Gibaud in the Buenos Aires Herald (hat tip: Jorge Gaggero). It’s fascinating. We’ll post just a couple of excerpts here, and advise readers to look at the whole thing. For instance: “I did public relations for the bank, which means you travel everywhere and entertain the clients so that they place their money with you rather
Read the full article…The deep joy of trusts and foundations
We aren’t sure whether to be horrified, flattered or entertained. Take a look at this peculiar video from a rather iffy-looking offshore promoter, complete with ’80s soundtrack and faux newsroom. If you go to the original source of this video, it turns out that they are explicitly using TJN material (from our detailed analysis of the UK-Swiss “Rubik” fiasco). For instance, they say: TweetShare
Report: a proposal to adopt unitary tax in Israel
From TJN Israel, a new report entitled A Proposal to Adopt a Reform in Taxing Multinational Corporations in Israel – Unitary Taxation. The summary is here, in English, and the longer report, in Hebrew, is here. The report explores why Israel’s existing tax regime has difficulties in combating tax evasion and avoidance by multinational companies (MNCs) and why a unitary tax approach could probably
Read the full article…Report: parties rely on unsafe top tax estimates in UK election
Tax is one of the key battlegrounds in the UK’s general election due on May 7. No tax is more important than the income tax, and debates about the wisdom of cutting or hiking the top rate of income tax seem likely to heat up as polling nears. Some political parties advocate raising the top tax rate from the current 45
Read the full article…Quote of the day – finance for development
From Tove Maria Ryding and María José Romero, an article in The Guardian, looking at the UN’s Finance for Development process, and a high-level conference set for Adis Ababa in July: “Finance for Development (FfD) is not a fundraising event. It focuses on systemic issues such as illicit financial flows, sovereign debt crisis, private financial flows, trade, investment and global governance. Improving
Read the full article…When a tax haven invokes the ‘level playing field’, run for the hills
From Canada’s Globe and Mail: “The Minister of Finance for Luxembourg says his country – labelled by critics as a tax haven for multinational corporations – is committed to sweeping international tax reforms being pushed by the G20 and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, as long as they create a “level playing field.” Which sounds so eminently reasonable.
Read the full article…What competition in the Offshore Game?
This week sees the launch of The Offshore Game, a project dedicated to looking at the role of offshore financial centres in sport. TJN has written about this here and here already. Now for a bit more of an overview of this emerging project. Our first report looks at the amount of finance from offshore holding companies in the UK professional football leagues. “How interesting
Read the full article…Veblen and Keynes comment on the UK Premier League
We’ve just written about the new Offshore Game report, covered extensively in The Guardian newspaper, and thought we’d note one of the nice little graphics about offshore ownership that The Guardian has created. TweetShare
Tax Justice: A Christian Response to a New Gilded Age
From the U.S. Presbyterian Church, a report written by a former World Bank economist entitled “Tax Justice: A Christian Response to a New Gilded Age”. As the summary notes, it “provides a framework for engaging in discussions about the large and growing concentration of income and wealth in U.S. society and about the tax structure as part of an agenda
Read the full article…The Offshore Game – new TJN report on offshore finance in football
From The Guardian, a major new story whose introduction runs as follows: “Research by the Guardian and the Tax Justice Network reveals 28 English clubs with substantial shareholdings overseas, opening up the football leagues to criticism for allowing ownership structures that could be used for tax avoidance.” See The Offshore Game website, and the main report, here. TweetShare
New U.S. report: Offshore Tax Havens Cost Small Businesses $3,244 a Year
From the U.S. Public Interests Research Group (PIRG): As tax day approaches, it’s important to remember that small businesses end up picking up the tab for offshore tax loopholes used by many large multinational corporations. U.S. PIRG joined Senator Bernie Sanders, Bryan McGannon of the American Sustainable Business Council, and Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice today to release
Read the full article…Quote of the day – tax avoidance as red flag for investors
From the Financial Times, our quote of the day: “investors were viewing the aggressiveness of a company’s tax planning as a proxy for accounting risks and the company’s broader management style.” Which is just as we have always said. Tax avoidance is shortcut behaviour: the opposite of building genuine long-term productive business. Or, as UK barrister David Quentin noted not so long
Read the full article…Quote of the day – on attitudes to corporate responsibility
Our quote of the day comes from Jolyon Maugham, a UK tax barrister. Our quote of the day is the bit in bold, which is a sign of how much success we and our allies have had in changing the debates: “Survey after survey places tax first amongst CSR concerns. Tax structured transactions are in near mortal decline. And litigating even
Read the full article…‘National Competitiveness’: a crowbar for corporate and financial interests
This was originally posted yesterday at the new Fools’ Gold site, which is dedicated to understanding how nations do or don’t ‘compete’. The term “UK PLC” — the ‘PLC’ bit standing for Public Limited Company — evokes notions that whole countries behave like corporations. It is routinely trotted out by politicians in the United Kingdom: why, this FG editor even heard (and gnashed teeth at) this
Read the full article…Tax Justice Research Bulletin 1(3)
By Alex Cobham, TJN’s Director of Research March 2015. Welcome to the third Tax Justice Research Bulletin, a monthly series dedicated to tracking the latest developments in policy-relevant research on national and international tax. This issue looks at new papers on the responsibilities of tax professionals in respect of abusive tax behaviour and corruption; and on the parallels between the 2008
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