About Nick Shaxson
UBS: invest in food, water and death
From the excellent weekly newsletter of the U.S. inequality-watching organisation Too Much: “Simon Smiles, the global chief investment officer at the Swiss bank UBS, usually only ladles out advice to investors worth at least $30 million. But Smiles has just done an interview that shares a bit of what he’s telling his clients. Increasing “international pressure on banking secrecy and
Read the full article…IMF: tax cuts don’t attract investment
From the IMF, a Working Paper. It doesn’t make quite the sweeping claim suggested in the headline, but still. “Using manufacturing and services firm-level data for 30 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, this paper shows that taxation is not a significant driver for the location of foreign firms in SSA, while other investment climate factors, such as infrastructure, human capital, and
Read the full article…Show trial of Swiss whistleblower Elmer now in 9th year
This month a Swiss court fought back against efforts by the United States to tackle criminal activity and tax its wealthy citizens properly. As Worldwide Tax Daily reports: TweetShare
U.S. Republicans to adopt pro tax evasion platform?
From Citizens for Tax Justice: “At its yearly winter meeting, the Republican National Committee is expected to approve a resolution calling for the repeal of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), a major law enacted in 2010 (as part of the HIRE Act) to clamp down on offshore tax evasion. TweetShare
Big Oil, Big Data: Nigerian corporate networks
From OpenOil.net: “Last month in Lagos, we brought together activists from the tech and oil worlds for a hackathon on the extractive industries of Nigeria. TweetShare
Norway moves on Country by Country reporting
From Sigrid Klæboe Jacobsen, Director of TJN – Norge In December, the Norwegian Parliament voted in favour of implementing country-by-country reporting. The Ministry of Finance has now announced the new regulations which tells us exactly what we’ve got, and what we haven’t got. TweetShare
China Leaks: how the BVI became China’s foreign tax haven of choice
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has pulled another humdinger of an investigation, publishing a Who’s Who in China’s offshore circles. We could highlight any number of things from this excellent report, but we’ll choose just two: TweetShare
Why is Davos held in the world’s top illicit money centre?
From the Davos OpenForum 2014: “Switzerland is known for its chocolate, watches and banking sector. But today, with traditional banking secrecy gone, the country has to reinvent itself to retain its competitive advantage.” Our emphasis added. That’s news to us. TweetShare
OECD: special tax rules for internet cos ‘unviable’
Internet companies are running rings around our governments, free-riding on the backs of ordinary taxpayers and reaping large fortunes for relatively small numbers of well-connected insiders, some of them rich enough to buy entire global newspapers with their pocket change, and thus potentially influence us all. TweetShare
The Bahamas – Another Captured State?
Written for TJN by someone with long experience of the Bahamas. The Bahamas is a stunningly beautiful archipelago of more than 700 islands, cays and islets, a proud nation populated with vibrant, passionate, good-hearted people. The economy of this small island state, ranked at 35th position on the 2013 Financial Secrecy Index and assessed towards the top end of the
Read the full article…A week in Tax Justice: Jan 20
Our new website will bring you a weekly round-up of tax justice news: our personal selection from a wide array of stories about tax justice, A Week in Tax Justice will be sent out to all TJN subscribers and will soon also be available on our App, which we’ll be bringing out in the next month or so. Here is the inaugural
Read the full article…The Price of Offshore, Revisited
July 22, 2012 Update, June 2014: TJN responds to attacks on the report (pdf here). MAIN REPORT 1 – The Price of Offshore Revisited: TJN’s in-depth and unprecedented study into the size of the offshore system of tax havens and/or secrecy jurisdictions. The report estimates that some $21-32 trillion is stashed offshore, in conditions of low or zero tax and substantial
Read the full article…Welcome to the new Tax Justice Network website and blog
Welcome to the new Tax Justice Network website, with integrated blog. TweetShare
Big Newsweek exposé on human rights abuses in tax haven Jersey
From the Treasure Islands blog: I’ve just had an email from Stuart Syvret, a dissident former health minister in the British tax haven of Jersey, who has just got out of prison after challenging the island’s financially-dominated oligarchy. The email was in his characteristically forthright style: “I and many of my former constituents have had our human rights monstrously abused
Read the full article…Public Eye Awards: Help put FIFA in the Hall of Shame
A while ago we wrote about this reprehensible item from world football’s governing body FIFA. This Tax Bubble that FIFA created around the South African world cup – despite FIFA’s being a gargantuan, unaccountable billionaire monopolist based in Switzerland – was a particularly shameful example of their anti-democratic rent-seeking behaviour. And they are going to do it again and again.
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