About Nick Shaxson
Why Piketty’s inequality numbers are understated
As we and everyone else have remarked, it’s the book of the moment: Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. We are reading it, and like so many others, we are impressed. Our main contribution to the debate will be – when we finish our analysis – to argue that the inequality problem is significantly understated. Crucially, it doesn’t take
Read the full article…PWC survey: most CEOs back country by country reporting
From Reuters: “Most chief executives globally would support the publication of country-by-country financial information to help stamp out corporate tax avoidance, a survey showed on Wednesday. TweetShare
On Britain’s new honesty box for corporate fraudsters.
From Prof. Prem Sikka: “Some 4,000 individuals appearing on international lists of alleged fraudsters, money launderers, terror financiers and corrupt officials were directors of UK registered companies in 2008 (the most recent data).” TweetShare
The April 2014 Taxcast
In the April 2014 Taxcast: Forget Congress! The Taxcast looks at the latest US state to take matters into its own hands and legislate against tax havens. Also: the scandal of how the Bank for International Settlements has kept offshore private wealth data to itself, the British government tries to impress its friends in Washington with a ‘tough’ new tax
Read the full article…Quote of the day: William Browder, Russia and Ukraine
In an interview with The American Interest, looking at Ukraine and the looting of the former Soviet Union, the co-founder of Hermitage Capital speaks out – all guns blazing. There are any number of Quotes of the Day we could highlight – but we thought we’d choose this one, prompted by the question of whether the West has any responsibility regarding
Read the full article…Report: $300 billion in Argentina’s offshore assets
From the Buenos Aires Herald: The total value of Argentines’ offshore assets as a result of capital flight reached US$298.891 billion in 2012, rising more than 250 percent from 1991, the latest report by the Economics and Finance Centre for Argentine Development (CEFID-AR) revealed. TweetShare
Mailbox companies and human rights: the Dutch connection
From our colleagues at SOMO in the Netherlands, an excellent article translated from the original in the Volkskrant newspaper. While it focuses on the Netherlands, it is another sign of the growing global awareness of the links between human rights and tax haven and secrecy jurisdiction abuses. Read more about tax havens and human rights here. TweetShare
On Piketty, mathematical silliness, inherited wealth and mysterious entities
From the book everyone’s talking about, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, a review by Paul Krugman in the New York Review of Books: “Why does inherited wealth play as small a part in today’s public discourse as it does? Piketty suggests that the very size of inherited fortunes in a way makes them invisible: ‘Wealth is so concentrated
Read the full article…Quote of the day: offshore London
From Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, an article entitled Cool London is dead, and the rich kids are to blame: “Tax empty houses? Why, no. We wouldn’t want to upset some ex-KGB thug who looted the Kazakh treasury in the mid 1990s. We wouldn’t want to annoy a banker who “honestly” didn’t know he was investing the Mexican cartels’ blood-soaked wealth.” TweetShare
Reports: the sorry state of U.S. tax dodging multinationals
Two major reports are worth highlighting here. First, and most recently, from the U.S. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (via Senator Carl Levin), a report on tax avoidance by U.S. multinational Caterpillar: “Caterpillar Inc., an American manufacturing icon, used a wholly owned Swiss affiliate to shift $8 billion in profits from the United States to Switzerland to take advantage of a
Read the full article…Swiss secrecy allies falling by the wayside
Swissinfo is running a long article today which begins like this: “The decision by Luxembourg and Austria to automatically exchange tax data with other European Union countries has isolated Switzerland in the global crusade against banking secrecy, a Tax Justice Network (TJN) expert tells swissinfo.ch.” It contains much that will be new, even to readers of this blog, on the subject
Read the full article…The Cost of Tax Abuse, 2011
A briefing paper on the cost of tax evasion worldwide, 2011. Cost of Tax Abuse TJN 2011 Highlights: Total tax evasion in excess of US$3.1 trillion, or 5.1% of global GDP, is due to activity in the shadow economy. Only a minority part of this is due to tax havens. Total healthcare spending worldwide amounted to $5.7 trillion. Tax evasion
Read the full article…Shareholders to get chance to vote on Google’s tax policy at AGM
From Responsible Investor, a story about a shareholder resolution about Google’s tax strategies has been placed by a group of responsible investors onto the agenda of its forthcoming annual shareholder meeting. “The proposal calls on the company’s board to “adopt a set of principles to address the impact of Google’s tax strategies on society, with particular focus on Google’s employees,
Read the full article…Tanzania: parliamentary inquiry on tax abuses, tax havens, illicit flows
Adapted from an email from Tove Maria Ryding, Eurodad: Good news from Tanzania – the Public Accounts Committee there has kicked off an inquiry on tax evasion and avoidance, amid severe concerns about illicit financial flows and capital flight. We might have some interesting times ahead: “During inquiry some large tax payers and multinationals will be summoned to be appear before
Read the full article…
