About Nick Shaxson
Why companies put together for tax reasons will be fragile
A while ago we explained how tax avoidance by multinational corporations is like refined sugar in the human body: empty financial calories with adverse long-term health effects. Now we have an article from Financial Times columnist John Gapper, who has looked at the tax-arbitrage nonsense driving the proposed Pfizer-AstraZeneca deal, and has reached very similar conclusions to us in our
Read the full article…Ethical shareholders call on Google to stop its tax abuses
The Domini Social Equity Fund and its partners have submitted a shareholder proposal to Google for its annual meeting on May 14th urging it to do something about its systematic tax abuses. We just blogged a petition in support of this proposal, which we’d urge readers to sign. The shareholder resolution, whose supporting documents contain a wealth of canny analysis, goes
Read the full article…How Glencore made its money
From an excellent new article in Foreign Affairs, by Ken Silverstein. It concerns the commodity trading giant Glencore, which Reuters once called “the biggest company you never heard of,” and which went public in May 2011. “What the IPO filing did not make clear was just how Glencore, founded four decades ago by Marc Rich, a defiant friend of dictators and spies
Read the full article…Singapore and Switzerland to engage in automatic info exchange?
From Le Monde: After intense diplomatic negotiations, [Switzerland and Singapore] are expected to sign an official declaration resolving to engage in automatic information exchange, alongside more than 40 other countries – including 34 OECD member states, but also G20 non-OECD member states, including China and Russia. According to our information, this surprise is expected to happen in Paris, at a
Read the full article…Petition: Google, pay your taxes!
A petition, with over 100,000 signatures so far, begins like this. “Google isn’t paying its taxes. The multi-billion dollar corporation has been under scrutiny for shifting using shell companies in Bermuda, Ireland and elsewhere to shelter at least $33 billion of revenue. TweetShare
Report: better tax rules could boost developing country corporate tax revenues by 100%
A new report from Oxfam, entitled BUSINESS AMONG FRIENDS: Why corporate tax dodgers are not yet losing sleep over global tax reform. It begins like this: “Tax dodging by big corporations deprives governments of billions of dollars. This drives rapidly increasing inequality. Recent G20 and OECD moves to clamp down on corporate tax dodging are a first step, but these have woken up a legion of
Read the full article…Singapore punishment for tax dodgers: pound them with stone mallet
Oxfam’s Duncan Green is in Singapore, where he’s visited an exhibition of the mythical Chinese ‘ten courts of hell’, which he describes as an equivalent to Dante’s Inferno. The punishments? Well, for misusing books, you get “‘Thrown onto tree of knives; body sawn into two’,” while for corruption you face “Thrown into volcanic http://healthsavy.com/product/effexor/ pit; frozen into blocks of ice;
Read the full article…Zero hours contracts: how tax avoidance helps drive the abuses
There has been a lot of attention about a report in the UK summarised in today’s Financial Times: “Unions and politicians have called for action to curb employment on a “zero-hours” basis after official data showed that UK employers are using about 1.4m contracts that do not guarantee a minimum number of hours.” TweetShare
New Germany-UK tax treaty undermines OECD tax reforms
A little-noticed new protocol to the Germany-UK tax treaty needs dragging into the daylight, since it appears to be a sneaky effort to undermine reforms by the OECD, the club of rich countries that oversees the international tax system. TweetShare
Stop press: large U.S. multinational decides to pay some tax
As expert after expert – and citizen after citizen – agrees: the international tax system is broken. Multinational corporations run rings around even the most sophisticated and well-resourced tax authorities, producing democracy-killing results such as the fact that General Electric paid a minus 11 percent US tax rate on average from 2008-12. Remember that the race to the bottom on
Read the full article…Avaaz on Jersey: give the tax thieves nowhere to hide
From Avaaz, a new campaign: Jersey is trying to get away with limited implementation of the G8’s tax transparency reforms. I worked in Jersey’s government, and know a deluge of messages from across the UK will surprise them. Write what you feel about tax dodging, and draw from the points below. Hurry – today’s the deadline for their official consultation! Featuring the
Read the full article…Pfizer and Astrazeneca merger shows US and UK both lose from UK’s predatory tax regime
Update: see this must-read post from Citizens for Tax Justice in the U.S., entitled Why Does Pfizer Want to Renounce Its Citizenship? From Tax Research UK: “The financial press is full of stories about Pfizer this morning, and its planned takeover of Astrazeneca. A recurring theme is the tax dimension of this story, highlighted in this Bloomberg piece by Jesse Drucker and
Read the full article…Russia and Ukraine: how secrecy jurisdictions undermine international sanctions
From the Financial Times: “Wealthy Russians and Ukrainians are trying to shift more cash into London property, say estate agents, amid indications that eastern European oligarchs are using the capital’s housing market to conceal their assets from international sanctions.” TweetShare
Publicis and Omnicom: a merger driven by tax abuse?
Reuters is carrying a fascinating story with a less than fascinating headline: “Push for tax-avoidance curbs in G-20 threatens Publicis-Omnicom deal.” Last July Paris-based Publicis and New York-headquartered Omnicom announced plans to merge to create the world’s biggest advertising group, which would be registered in the Netherlands and tax resident in the United Kingdom. TweetShare
New report: Inequality, Tax and a Rising Africa?
From Tax Justice Network for Africa and Christian Aid, a new report entitled Africa rising? Inequalities and the essential role of fair taxation. It investigates income inequality in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe: there has been little definitive analysis of income inequality trends on the continent. TweetShare
