About Nick Shaxson
African low income countries demand fair share of tax
From Tove Maria Ryding at Eurodad, via email: At a media event in Washington last week, finance ministers of francophone low-income countries (DRC and Cameroon) demanded a “fair share of global tax revenues” and a “high-level meeting under UN auspices”. TweetShare
Guest blog: Tax and the social contract in Brazil
Guest blog: Tax and the social contract in Brazil By Marcus Melo, professor of Political Science at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and Armando Barrientos, co-research director of the International Research Institute on Brazil & Africa. Internationally, debates on tax in Brazil often focus on its refusal to adopt OECD transfer pricing guidelines, but the country’s domestic arrangements also
Read the full article…TJN Africa takes Kenya government to court over Mauritius treaty
Kenya’s Star newspaper is reporting that TJN-Africa has gone to the High Court in Nairobi to stop a double tax treaty between Kenya and Mauritius, which is supposed to come into effect in July 2015. Not only do tax treaties with tax havens like Mauritius often allow multinational corporations to strip profits artificially out of victim countries (in this case Kenya), but
Read the full article…How Finland’s tax treaties contradict its development policies
Update for tax treaty aficionados: we are reminded that the Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation (VIDC) published this study of Austrian tax treaties in April: Austrian Tax Treaties signed with Developing Countries – a Legal and Economic Analysis. From Finnwatch, a report on Finnish double taxation treaties (DTTs) which analyse how fair and beneficial they are for developing countries.
Read the full article…Direct corporate welfare costs UK taxpayers £85bn a year
We recently remarked on the good work done by Good Jobs First in highlighting state-level corporate welfare in the United States. Greg Leroy of Good Jobs First also points is towards the work by the Pew Charitable Trusts to bring more transparency to federal-level subsidies and spending. Now, from The Guardian: “Kevin Farnsworth, a senior lecturer in social policy at the
Read the full article…Anonymous company ownership, in a picture
This is from a new Global Witness report entitled “The shell starts to crack? Real owners of Myanmar’s oil and gas blocks come forward.” We like this picture because it shows, simply, how issues that are at the heart of TJN’s work are so multi-faceted. Illegal logging in Asia connects with the foreclosure mess in the U.S., to blood diamonds and tax
Read the full article…Switzerland wants to cherry-pick “partner” countries on transparency
Updated, Oct 10, with additional analysis from the Swiss “Q and A“: Switzerland has grudgingly made some important concessions on secrecy in recent years – although we’ve always been at pains to stess that it has happened an inch at a time, and usually bilaterally. Typically, this means making concessions to one country alone – most importantly, the United States,
Read the full article…China taking multinational corporations to task on tax
This has been brewing for some time. An extensive audit has begun in China of transnational corporations (TNCs) shifting profits for service fees and management fees that are paid to related parties, often in tax havens offshore. TweetShare
The words ‘tax’ and ‘human rights’ – now appearing often in the same sentence
From Mauricio Lazala, Deputy Director, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre: “Recently, I participated in the annual sustainability forum of a global food & beverage company that is highly regarded for its social responsibility policies. The Chairman confidently spoke about their progress on land-grabbings, freedom of association, and access to water. But when somebody mentioned tax avoidance as a human rights
Read the full article…Publishing tax breaks and subsidies for corporations – a good idea whose time has come
The indefatigable US-based organisation Good Jobs First has sent a fascinating email, which relates to the United States but could have general relevance for other countries. This one is located at the fascinating, busy intersection between tax and transparency. The intro: “For many years, we at Good Jobs First have criticized GASB-the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, or “GAZ-bee”- for failing
Read the full article…No it’s not your money: why taxation isn’t theft
A guest blog by Philip Goff. No it’s not your money Why taxation isn’t theft Many political arguments start from the assumption that taxation is the government taking ‘our money’ off us. When austerity hit the arts in 2011, Dr Steve Davies of the pseudo-think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs argued on Channel Four news [TJN: a mainstream UK television current
Read the full article…Tax and corporate responsibility in Denmark – new report
The Danish organisation IBIS has just released a new report on tax and corporate responsibility, as part of its wider Tax Dialogue project on corporate responsibility. It maps the policies and practice with regards to corporate tax and CSR among some of the most influential corporates and investors in Denmark. The report found that: TweetShare
On taxing multinationals: latest scorecard for the OECD BEPS project
The OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) process is the pre-eminent global attempt to try and stop multinational corporations running rings around the world’s tax authorities. We have argued before that the OECD, a club of rich countries, has not sufficiently taken the interests of developing countries into account. We have also been involved in the setting up of
Read the full article…Country by country reporting: news from Finland, Netherlands, France
We just noted some surprising news about PwC’s report for the European Commission endorsing Country by Country (CbC) reporting for banks. Yesterday we learned (h/t Catherine Olier) of some very public new support for CbC reporting from Jyrki Katainen, the European Parliament’s Vice President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness. Now we have some further progress to report, in different countries. TweetShare
Developing countries and tax treaties: learning from mistakes
From Martin Hearson, whom we quoted recently on a related topic: “One big theme from the interviews I conducted on my recent African trip is that tax officials in developing countries are really starting to raise concerns about some of their tax treaties. This is particularly true of treaties with the Nerherlands, Mauritius and other countries that can leave them
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