About Nick Shaxson
Tax + transparency fact-finding mission: report from Asian, African, Latin American experts
This newly published report is the outcome of a Tax and Transparency Fact-finding Mission carried out by a delegation of independent experts from Asia, Africa and Latin America in October and November 2013, based on visits to Switzerland, France, Norway, United Nations, The OECD, and the European Commission. See a Spanish version here. TweetShare
On the new Asian Tax Justice Alliance
From our colleagues at Kepa in Finland, describing the birth of a region-wide consolidation of the previously scattered tax justice movements in Asia. “Over 60 leaders of people´s movements, civil society organizations and trade unions came together in Bangkok and took up the task of building a long-pending regional alliance on Tax Justice in Asia. Despite the differences in country contexts,
Read the full article…Freeports: now Luxembourg adds to the sleaze
Update: fascinating article by The Independent on this freeport. In June we noted that France’s Médiapart had done an excellent investigation into Freeports: special kinds of tax haven offerings that fill a particular niche in the grand, constantly mutating global offshore ecosystem. Before that, The Economist did a similarly excellent piece, in English, aptly titled Freeports: Über-warehouses for the ultra-rich. It noted:
Read the full article…New book: fighting corporate abuse
A new book titled “Fighting Corporate Abuse: Beyond Predatory Capitalism” is to be published by Pluto. The authors include two TJN Senior Advisers, Prem Sikka and Sol Picciotto. The book offers public policies for tackling corporate abuses, as the blurb notes: TweetShare
The Taxcast, September 2014
The latest Taxcast: ‘Unpatriotic corporate deserters’? We ask why so many US companies are relocating, and what we can do about it (update: as the Taxcast was coming to press, we have some news). Also, the less reported side of the Scottish vote on independence, the OECD’s latest ‘action’ plan to tackle international tax avoidance and much, much more. Featuring:
Read the full article…OECD again pretends it’s solved the problem of financial secrecy
The OECD seems to have learned from experience that if you make a grand, unsubstantiated claim in support of your work, half the world’s journalists will cut and paste your statements without stopping to check how true they are. For example, in 2011, they grandly announced that The Era of Bank Secrecy Is Over, garnering plenty of headlines along those
Read the full article…Don’t sign OECD tax treaties: the case of Uganda
Update, Dec 9: Martin Hearson adds his own updated analysis of Uganda’s tax treaties in a Powerpoint presentation here. A while ago we quoted U.S. tax expert Lee Sheppard excoriating OECD model tax treaties, in a fiery presentation which included such gems as: For multinationals, “there are countries for which there is extraction, and countries where there are customers, and these
Read the full article…Links – Sept 19
We’ve not had links for a week, for capacity reasons. Here is a somewhat quirky selection: Alibaba’s corporate structure: just look at those British tax havens FT Alphaville The Life and Times of John Fredriksen – Putin’s “Bagman” in London Fredriksen Watch Part 3. The first English translation of an investigation by Norway’s Dagens Næringsliv (Daily Business) into John Fredriksen, the London-based billionaire. See also
Read the full article…OECD tax boss says OECD tax haven is a victim
Pascal Saint-Amans, the OECD’s head of tax, has made some rather ill-advised comments in an otherwise interesting interview with the Irish Times. This concerns the OECD’s so-called BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) project to try and crack down on some of the more egregious loopholes in international tax rules that let multinational corporations get away with such abuses such as
Read the full article…How many people in a democracy want lower taxes?
Well, that clearly depends on the country, and the time of day. Britain is reputed to be one of the more conservative, lower-tax ones, at least among OECD countries. But this graph, from Oxford economics professor Simon Wren-Lewis about UK attitudes on the size of the state, should certainly give its politicians pause for thought. The graph, which draws on data
Read the full article…Quote of the day: shareholder value and economists
From a fascinating long article about the genesis of high executive pay in the United States, a quote from French financial economist Jean-Charles Rochet: “Everyone knows that corporations are not just cash machines for their shareholders, but that they also provide goods and services for their consumers, as well as jobs and incomes for their employees. Everyone, that is, except most
Read the full article…No Role for Public Scrutiny in OECD Plan to Curb Corporate Tax Dodging
From the Financial Transparency Coalition, of which TJN is an active member: No Role for Public Scrutiny in OECD Plan to Curb Corporate Tax Dodging For Immediate Release September 16, 2014 WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) new recommendations to fight multinational corporate tax avoidance look robust from the onset, but there’s something missing. Since the
Read the full article…Petition: tell the UN to stop tax abuse
We recently noted an open letter to Ban Ki-Moon, by the group Academics Stand Against Poverty, calling on the United Nations to put an end to tax abuse. Now here’s the Avaaz petition. Please sign, and pass it on. TweetShare
Anatomy of a tax haven: how the finance curse strikes Jersey
The investigative newspaper Médiapart, which is fast gaining a reputation in France for hard-hitting reporting, has a special report on Jersey, Britain’s (and to a lesser extent France’s) favourite tax haven. It is fascinating, not least because it explicitly references our work on the Finance Curse, where countries that become over-dependent on financial services activity suffer many symptoms similar to
Read the full article…Country by country reporting: here it comes
From Tax Research, reposted in full, with a few key links added: The era of country-by-country reporting is arriving The OECD has announced its 2014 outcomes from the Base Erosion and Profits Shifting process this afternoon. As far as I am concerned the key issue is country-by-country reporting, which is the subject of BEPS Action Plan 13. The summary on this issue,
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