About Nick Shaxson
Quote of the day: fiduciary duties
From Adam Kanzer of Domini Social Investments, in an article regarding a recent Google shareholder vote seeking the adoption of a responsible code of conduct to guide the company’s global tax strategies: “Imagine a legal obligation, based on principles of prudence and loyalty, that compels us to condone behavior that stifles innovation, destroys local and national economies, and shifts heavy financial
Read the full article…Private equity: harnessing secrecy to fleece investors and taxpayers
The widely-read U.S. financial blog Naked Capitalism is running a fascinating post about the private equity industry, which involves the release of a number of apparently sensitive documents. The article notes: “For decades, private equity (PE) firms have asserted that limited partnership agreements (LPAs), the contracts between themselves and investors, should be treated in their entirety as trade secrets, and
Read the full article…Two lieutenants of leading EU finance critic defect to ‘the enemy’
That’s from an article in the Financial Times, which begins like this: “The UK’s Investment Management Association has poached two key lieutenants of Sven Giegold, the German Green MEP who has been a scourge of the fund industry in recent years.” This is of interest to us for two reasons: first that it (anecdotally) serves as a reminder of one aspect
Read the full article…The Piketty controversy and the offshore wealth problem
As many readers will already know, there’s a big controversy going on regarding Prof. Thomas Piketty’s world-famous economics work Capital in the 21st Century, with the Financial Times alleging that he faces a ‘Reinhardt-Rogoff moment’ because of data problems. Piketty responds that he’s been transparent about everything and the FT is being ‘ridiculous’ to suggest that it undermines his central conclusions
Read the full article…Credit Suisse: most of its victims haven’t seen any justice at all
There’s been a lot of debate about the $2.6 billion (possibly tax-deductible, despite claims to the contrary) fine that Credit Suisse has paid for its systematic policies of attacking the U.S. tax system and fostering and, by implication, encouraging, criminal behaviour by thousands of U.S. citizens. We and many others have decried the resolution as deeply inadequate, given the scale
Read the full article…Tax chart of the day: US taxes
We’ve just blogged Citizens for Tax Justice’s latest report on U.S. Fortune 500 companies and their unpaid taxes. Now, from the Financial Times, a chart. TweetShare
Switzerland fights to curb scope of global transparency moves (updated)
Cross-posted with the Escape from Europe blog: The Swiss Federal Council on Wednesday issued a statement making it all too clear what it thinks “the new global standard for the automatic exchange of information in tax matters” should look like. This concerns the OECD’s ongoing project to create a new framework for international financial transparency, which we’ve written about before: while
Read the full article…CTJ: U.S. Fortune 500 companies likely escaping $550bn in tax
From Citizens for Tax Justice: “American Fortune 500 corporations are likely saving about $550 billion by holding nearly $2 trillion of “permanently reinvested” profits offshore. Twenty-eight of these corporations reveal that they have paid an income tax rate of 10 percent or less to the governments of the countries where these profits are officially held, indicating that most of these
Read the full article…Tax haven operators hope to persuade China to block global transparency moves
From the BVI Beacon in the British Virgin Islands, a Special Report entitled Under pressure, BVI fears big impact on financial services. The BVI, and particularly a number of mostly white, male expatriate workers, have made a living out of secrecy. They don’t like all this transparency stuff that we and our colleagues are pushing for, and which is now becoming
Read the full article…It seems that Credit Suisse’s fine may be tax-deductible after all
We have written recently about how Credit Suisse’s $2.6 billion fine for its history of abusing the U.S. tax system and facilitating high crimes may seem like a lot of money, but it could — and should — have been a lot worse. Why did no bankers go to jail? And, perhaps more importantly, why does it still have its
Read the full article…Why did the Australian government keep this tax symposium secret? (updated)
May 26: Updated with new details from the Sydney Morning Herald This concerns a meeting in Tokyo, hosted by the Australian Treasury, to discuss the G20’s tax agenda. This involves not just the OECD’s “BEPS” project to reform the international rules for taxing multinational corporations, but also the rules and guidelines on information exchange and transparency, as well as on
Read the full article…Human Rights Policy Brief: a Post-2015 Fiscal Revolution
The New York-based Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) and Christian Aid have just published an important new paper entitled A Post-2015 Fiscal Revolution: Human Rights Policy Brief. It is a most useful contribution to the fast-growing community of researchers and research on the crucial topic of tax justice and human rights. (In fact, the paper focuses on fiscal justice and human rights
Read the full article…How Putin’s comrades washed their money in Switzerland and the UK
This is about an excellent Reuters investigation into a Russian state scheme to buy expensive medical equipment – and send money to Swiss bank accounts. It is worth reading in its entirety, but we will hone in on this bit: TweetShare
How ‘competitiveness’ became one of the great unquestioned virtues of contemporary culture
This headline is drawn from an important article at the London School of Economics website by Will Davies, Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. We’ve not had contact with Davies, but it seems we have been thinking along similar lines. TweetShare
Credit Suisse and tax evasion: a fine is fine, but why no jail time?
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