About Nick Shaxson
On the Capture of Luxembourg by Big Accountancy Firms
UPDATE: TJN is among a host of signatories to a letter (published here) calling on the Luxembourg authorities to refrain from prosecuting whistleblower Antoine Deltour. In the letter we note that even the Luxembourg government has publicly recognised that the information revealed by M Deltour has uncovered market information crucial to the proper functioning of the European Union’s internal market,
Read the full article…EU compromise on shell company regulation is improvement but falls short
From the Financial Transparency Coalition, of which TJN is a member: EU compromise tightens regulation on shell companies, but without public access, many still in the dark EU nations agree to national registers of company ownership information, but deal on 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive doesn’t ensure public access BRUSSELS — In a deal reached last night, parliamentarians and campaigners have
Read the full article…Politicians should wear their sponsors on their clothes, like race car drivers
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Bogus US shell cos, inc. “Are you hiding from the law?” she chuckled
We recently pointed to a fascinating article by U.S. journalist Ken Silverstein about Mossack Fonseca, a particularly troubling ask-no-questions offshore incorporations firm based in Panama, with offices in many of our favourite offshore jurisdictions: the Bahamas, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Jersey, Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands, and the US, specifically the states of Wyoming, Florida, and Nevada. The potted history of Panama
Read the full article…Quote of the day: funny money kills people
Quote of the day, from Elena Panfilova, the Moscow head of Transparency International, on élite Russian money stashed in Europe: “The missing money means schools not funded properly, hospitals not built. For Russian people it’s not funny money, it’s literally killing them.” More quotations here. TweetShare
British tax havens fight back against transparency moves
Just over a year ago the British Prime Minister David Cameron, whose family has had tax haven interests for many years, tried to whitewash Britain’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies with a statement saying: “I do not think it is fair any longer to refer to any of the Overseas Territories or Crown Dependencies as tax havens.” Which, as we pointed out
Read the full article…Our new events page
We have started populating a new page with events related to Tax Justice. You can find it here. It will be permanently located in the website structure: click on Topics – More – Tax Justice Events. The page does not contain all past events. Please message us if you think we’re missing something important. Tax Justice Events. TweetShare
GFI: Illicit Financial Flows Drained $991bn from Developing Economies in 2012
From Global Financial Integrity: Crime, Corruption, Tax Evasion Drained a Record US$991.2 Billion in Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Economies in 2012 Illicit Flows from Developing & Emerging Countries Growing at 9.4% per Year US$6.6 Trillion Stolen from Developing World from 2003-2012; Trade Misinvoicing Responsible for 77.8% of Illicit Outflows China, Russia, Mexico, India, Malaysia—in Declining Order—Are Biggest Exporters of
Read the full article…Quote of the day – on tax and technological innovation
From Prof. William Lazonick, a widely renowned U.S. analyst of what makes successful companies: “All of the technologies in the iPhone – things like touch-screen technology, GPS, and so on — originated with government spending, funded by taxpayer money. That’s why a company like Apple should be using a substantial portion of its super-profits to support government investment in the next generation of
Read the full article…Country by country reporting: are the knives already out?
TJN has been pushing for country by country since our launch in 2003, via the concept’s designer Richard Murphy. We have made astonishing progress since then: the concept has overcome pretty much all objections and seems on track to be rolled out worldwide. But Joe Stead of Christian Aid has drawn our attention to something new and worrying that could be in the
Read the full article…Tax haven whistleblowers: where are the human rights organisations?
Update: here’s another whistleblower victim of tax haven practices for human rights organisations to help defend. Antoine Deltour, of Luxleaks fame. We are big fans of human rights organisations, generally speaking, but we’re going to say some uncomfortable things about some of them here. Yesterday we noted that Rudolf Elmer, the Swiss whistleblower who has been persecuted for years by the Swiss
Read the full article…Tim Worstall: UK will never introduce a “Google Tax”
We’re a few days late with this, but it’s still fun. There’s a commentator out there, a former press officer for the racially challenged and anti-European UK Independence Party, who likes to attack TJN from time to time. His speciality is the sneering, ad hominem attack: he has a record of having called women things like “bitch” and “little bitch” and using the c-word and
Read the full article…Luxembourg Leaks 2: Koch Industries, Disney, Skype edition
So the next round of Luxleaks is with us. Corporate tax avoidance, as the chair of the UK’s Public Accounts Committee put it, “on an industrial scale.” We post an array of stories below, and will write more about this in due course. As it happens, Luxembourg is likely getting it in the neck from another quarter too: it has been exposed as a
Read the full article…Corporate tax cuts don’t work
That’s the headline of a short article in the current edition of The World Today, the flagship publication of London-based think tank Chatham House. An excerpt: TweetShare
OECD: tax does not harm economic growth, but inequality does
The OECD has produced a welcome new report whose core statement is probably this one: “New OECD research shows that when income inequality rises, economic growth falls.” Now that’s not a new finding, but there’s been a lot of controversy in this area for years and this is the latest study adding to the fast-growing weight of evidence that one
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