About Nick Shaxson
Why the Netherlands is the world’s largest source of FDI
Dutch FDI assets in 2012 were even larger than the United States’, on some metrics. This guest blog from Francis Weyzig explains what is going on. Why the Netherlands is the world’s largest source of FDI Luxembourg is in the spotlight these days because so many multinationals shift their taxable profits there to avoid taxes elsewhere. LuxLeaks helps us to understand
Read the full article…Luxembourg’s Sweetheart Deals: Could the OECD Stop Them?
Guest blog by Prof. Sol Picciotto, a TJN Senior Adviser. Luxembourg’s Sweetheart Deals: Could the OECD Stop Them? In an earlier comment on the Luxembourg tax leaks, we pointed out that there is no world tax authority which can judge whether the sweetheart deals it has been offering multinationals are legal. The only bodies which could do so are the
Read the full article…New report: time to end extreme inequality
From Oxfam, a major new report on inequality, with a good tax justice angle. The email notes: “I am very pleased to share our major new report “Even It Up: Time to End Extreme Inequality”. With this, we launch our new five year global campaign for our organisation and will scale up our work on tax dodging across the world. TweetShare
PWC and Luxembourg: no, this wasn’t ‘legal’ behaviour
From Prem Sikka, a quote from an article from June that provides essential context for those who would dismiss the explosive leaks and analysis from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Luxembourg. The Big Four accountancy firm PWC has been exposed as having facilitated and even encouraged highly abusive tax schemes, which are so extensive and outrageous that we can only
Read the full article…What Luxembourg’s tax haven business looks like
Following the huge Luxembourg Leaks story that’s emerged this morning, we thought we’d post a little reminder of what the tax haven business in Luxembourg actually looks like. This short one-minute video, from the Treasure Islands website, was created in 2011. The offending Apple Itunes mail box address has since been moved, but we think the video still gives a good indication of
Read the full article…Quote of the day – Luxembourg and the drugs trade
From a Guardian story about the ICIJ Luxembourg story that’s broken today: “Asked recently if such a crackdown risked damaging the economy of Luxembourg, one senior figure closely involved in the G20 reform programme said: “I don’t care. It is like saying: ‘If you fight drugs there will be no jobs in certain parts of Mexico.’” Well put. TweetShare
Huge trove of information blasts hole in Luxembourg’s theatre of probity
From the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a story we’ve been waiting for: “Capping a six-month investigation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its media partners are publishing a secret cache of leaked tax documents and dozens of news stories that show how multinational corporations throughout the globe routed profits through tiny and wealthy Luxembourg to reduce
Read the full article…On the risk of listening to the promoters of tax schemes
From the UK’s HM Revenue & Customs, via Tax Research, a UK-focused article that is relevant for all companies listening to the siren songs of the promoters of tax schemes: 10 things a tax avoidance scheme promoter won’t always tell you TweetShare
Denmark’s tax treaties: time for change
Tax treaties are international agreements between countries that share out taxing rights between countries when there’s cross-border investment between them. The international tax treaty system is strongly based on models created by the OECD, a club of rich countries, and it shouldn’t be a great surprise that developing countries often find themselves losing out in terms of how the cross-border tax pie is shared out
Read the full article…Reports of the Death of Banking Secrecy Are Greatly Exaggerated
From Andres Knobel in the Huffington Post, a reminder that while the OECD is very good at declaring the end of banking secrecy, it does like to gloss over the small matter that this is very far from the truth: “Leading finance ministers met in Berlin last week to begin the process of adopting a new global standard for the
Read the full article…Tax avoidance: so many people “talking out of their asset classes.”
We’ve just blogged a theological view of tax avoidance, in which we highlighted an excellent short, pithy blog by TJN Senior Adviser David Quentin with an equally excellent headline: People talking out of their asset classes. It’s worth reading in full; we have decided on reflection that it’s important (and good) enough to haul it out from underneath our previous blog, and make it into a
Read the full article…Argentina’s capital flight and transfer pricing: new report
A new report from Argentina’s CEFID-AR looks into the evolution of Argentina’s transfer pricing legislation. A short summary follows. From the dictatorship that began in 1976 and lasted until 1983, the OECD’s so-called ‘arm’s length method’ for tackling transfer pricing was explicitly incorporated into several relevant laws such as the Investment, Intellectual Property and Corporate Tax laws. The arm’s length method
Read the full article…“Good” companies may have to pay more tax than law requires, say theologians
From Christian Aid, a new report exploring morality and taxpaying. Its introduction notes: “Many developing nations are seriously affected by the way in which some multinational companies manipulate their profits to allow them to pay little or no tax in the countries in which they are operating. As Esther Reed observes in her paper, this simply feels wrong to most
Read the full article…Who’s not coming to dinner? Some notes on the information exchange laggards
There’s been a lot of news this week about a meeting in Berlin where finance ministers and tax bosses from 51 countries signed an agreement to implement automatic information exchange, a standard which we’ve been calling for for years and which is finally on the agenda. Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble was probably not so very far off the mark when
Read the full article…New report: food speculation in poor countries, via tax havens
From the Financial Transparency Coalition, a blog by Naomi Fowler, entitled Feeding The 1%: New Report Exposes The Disturbing World Of Agricultural Investors, Financial Secrecy And Land Grabs. It looks at a report by campaign group GRAIN, which produces evidence indicating that an avalanche of investment into agriculture after the 2008 global food crisis is predatory and that many investors have “little or no
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