About Nick Shaxson
The Offshore Wrapper: a week in tax justice
Our weekly Offshore wrapper, by George Turner. Income inequality: the IMF calls for tax justice TweetShare
Why Russia no longer fears the West. It’s the offshore, stupid
If there’s one story you read today make it this one, from Politico Magazine. It’s triggered by the crisis in Ukraine, but it’s been a long time coming. The point of this short story is clear: Western leaders are waking up to the fact that Russia no longer fears or even respects them. Why? Well: “Russia thinks the West is no
Read the full article…Anonymous UK company owned Viktor Yanukovych’s presidential palace compound
From Global Witness – see also Daily Mail and The Independent. Update: see also this important blog, looking at the national security implications of all this corruption. Anonymous UK company owned Viktor Yanukovych’s presidential palace compound 1 March 2014 The private residence of the newly-toppled president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, has come to be seen as a monument to decadence.[i] When
Read the full article…European MEP calls for hearing on Swiss banking scandals
Following the latest Credit Suisse scandal in the United States, Ana Gomes, a European Member of Parliament, has issued this public letter to the chairs of the Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET) Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE); and Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON.) We fully support this letter, and we urge others to do so too. Her letter reads as
Read the full article…Tax justice and modern-day colonialism: Areva vs. Niger
From Reuters, an excellent Special Report: “Niger has become the world’s fourth-largest producer of the ore after Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. But uranium has not enriched Niger. The former French colony remains one of the poorest countries on earth.” TweetShare
Not quite anywhere: shadow banking and the offshore system
A useful reminder about shadow banking from Anastasia Nesvetailova, Reader in International Political Economy at City University London. It begins like this: “It takes me about two hours to assemble a team of finance geeks and lawyers to devise a product or a transaction that would bypass any new rule or regulation coming our way,” said a senior French banker
Read the full article…Survey: the corporate tax debate is biting the corporations
From tax advisers Taxand, who have just conducted a global survey of corporate Chief Finance Officers (CFOs): 76% of survey respondents said that the exposure in the media of corporate tax planning activity has a detrimental impact on a company’s reputation 31% said that the intense media focus on tax planning had made them change their approach to tax planning. TweetShare
Income inequality leads to slower economic growth – IMF study
From Reuters: “Income inequality can lead to slower or less sustainable economic growth, while redistribution of income, when measured, does not hurt and can even help an economy, IMF staff found in a research study released on Wednesday.” TweetShare
Read our lips: Ireland is a tax haven. Part xxvi
From Unite, Ireland (via Tax Research), a nice little graph showing effective corporate tax rates in Europe. We haven’t seen this one before. Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – the Eurozone’s three most notorious tax havens – are the clear abusers. TweetShare
The Credit Suisse scandal: echoes of Too Big To Jail
We’ve had a bit of time to look through the landmark Credit Suisse report from the U.S. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, outlining industrial-scale Swiss corruption. It contains some pretty instructive things about some of the ways banks use to get around international initiatives, and about those initiatives themselves. Here are some highlights. TweetShare
Tax havens and corruption: Lebedev and TJN in the NYT
From Alexander Lebedev in the New York Times: “According to the Tax Justice Network, an independent group promoting efforts to curb tax avoidance, crooked business people, working with corrupt officials, have embezzled $30 trillion over the last 15 years — or half of the world’s annual gross domestic product.” TweetShare
Credit Suisse: industrial scale corruption in Switzerland
From The Guardian: “Senators Carl Levin and John McCain had harsh words for the Justice Department and the Swiss government, too, as they released a 178-page permanent subcommittee on investigation (PSI) report into offshore tax avoidance. TweetShare
Guernsey milking and the offshore stock exchange
The International Advisor magazine has just reported: “Guernsey chief minister Peter Harwood resigned today, in the wake of publication of a critical article in the current issue of the British satirical and investigative publication, Private Eye.” This refers to an excellent report entitled “Milking in Guernsey” by The Eye into the scandal-plagued Guernsey-based Channel Islands Stock Exchange (CISX,) TweetShare
Fashion retailer’s tax dodges boost European inequality
Bloomberg tax star Jesse Drucker has another fine article out about the Spanish retailer Inditex, the parent of high street retail giant Zara. We would urge you to read it. Among many other things, it contains: “In the past five years, Inditex has shifted almost $2 billion in profits to a tiny unit operating in the Netherlands and Switzerland, records show. Although
Read the full article…Report: the Sorry State of U.S. Corporate Taxes, 2008-2012
A major new report from the indefatigable Citizens for Tax Justice in the U.S. The Executive Summary begins: The Sorry State of Corporate Taxes What Fortune 500 Firms Pay (or Don’t Pay) in the USA And What they Pay Abroad — 2008 to 2012 TweetShare
