About Nick Shaxson
What if tax reform was a fundamental human right?
In January we blogged our 2016 Tax Justice and Human Rights essay competition, in partnership with Oxfam. It was a competition aimed at legal students and professionals, seeking ideas on how human rights law can be used in the fight against tax dodging. The winning student submission was from Megan Jones, a PhD Candidate at the Queensland University of Technology. She has written a joint
Read the full article…More than $12 trillion stuffed offshore, from developing countries alone
From The Guardian: “More than $12tn has been siphoned out of Russia, China and other emerging economies into the secretive world of offshore finance, new research has revealed, as David Cameron prepares to host world leaders for an anti-corruption summit. . . . The analysis, carried out by Columbia University professor James S Henry for the Tax Justice Network, shows
Read the full article…Panama Papers: source issues a tax justice document
The source for the “Panama Papers” data leaks, originally via Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, has issued a statement expressing mixed feelings about the world’s reactions to the leaks. It is a devastating statement of tax justice and the main purpose of this blog is really to ensure that our readers are aware of its existence. We’ve put a few comments below, but they are
Read the full article…Lessons from Iceland, where offshore created an onshore bubble free of rules and regulations
Lessons from Iceland, where offshore created an onshore bubble free of rules and regulations A guest blog by Sigrún Davíðsdóttir In a matter of a few years tiny Iceland became the world’s most ‘offshored’ country, both proportionally in terms of the number of clients the banks “sent offshore,” and in the pervasiveness of offshore companies in the business community. The
Read the full article…Tax haven Jersey – the North Korea connection
Recently, in The Guardian: “Jersey, for example, offers a stable political and fiscal environment along with strong, internationally recognised regulation and financial expertise. Jersey has no secrecy laws but respects client confidentiality. Furthermore, Jersey is a co-operative jurisdiction which has signed 20 tax information exchange agreements and has been placed on the OECD’s list of jurisdictions – along with the
Read the full article…On Luxembourg’s contribution to financial instability
Since the global financial crisis erupted we’ve been running a web section called tax havens & financial crisis – which looks at the risks that tax havens pose to financial stability. Perhaps the strongest thread running through this page is the fact that tax havens provide escape routes from rules – such as financial regulations – which enable players to take the cream
Read the full article…In the dock: Antoine Deltour, Edouard Perrin – or Luxembourg?
Who is in the dock? The whistleblowers? Or the tax haven of Luxembourg and PWC, the multinational that has been behind this trial? TweetShare
Guest blog: Panama, the secret garden of the Colombian oligarchy
Update: Colombia and Panama reach agreement on information-sharing. Panama, the secret garden of the Colombian oligarchy This guest blog is written by a political news writer in Colombia, who wishes to remain anonymous. As everywhere else in the world, the disclosure of the Mossack Fonseca documents has been on the front page of all major Colombian papers. However, the close historical
Read the full article…BEPS Monitoring Group on curbing tax treaty abuses
From the BEPS Monitoring Group, a TJN-backed civil society organisation tasked with monitoring the OECD’s so-called “Base Erosion and Profit Shifting” (BEPS) proposals to crack down on international corporate tax avoidance. The (wonkish but important) submission here concerns so-called “non-CIV” funds that are not collective investment vehicles. (Collective investment vehicles are entities that allow investors to pool their money and invest the
Read the full article…Guest blog: have universities gone offshore with finance theory and teaching?
HAVE UNIVERSITIES GONE OFFSHORE WITH THEIR FINANCE THEORIES AND TEACHING? Dr. Atul K. Shah, Suffolk Business School, University Campus Suffolk Twitter @atulkshah Offshore is not just about secrecy or taxation. It forces us to reflect on the nature of knowledge, truth and expertise. Accounting and Finance are massive disciplines taught in business schools all over the world, with thousands of
Read the full article…A graphical assault on supply-side tax cuts and tax ‘competitiveness’
From Fools’ Gold: Fools’ Gold [and TJN] author Nicholas Shaxson has just had a piece in the Washington Post entitled Five Myths about Tax Havens in which Myth 5 goes like this: “5. Cutting corporate taxes helps nations compete with tax havens. Reducing corporate taxes to attract wealth back from tax havens sounds plausible — “Republicans call [tax inversions] the inevitable
Read the full article…Irish Times: US taxpayers growing tired of Ireland’s one big idea
That one big idea isn’t corporate tax avoidance – though one might be forgiven for thinking so. It’s Foreign Direct Investment, or FDI. As we’ve shown, FDI into Ireland, and the so-called “Celtic Tiger, was primarily not driven by tax and corporate tax avoidance. Really, it wasn’t. Now Fintan O’Toole, one of Ireland’s best known commentators, has written a profoundly important
Read the full article…Luxleaks whistleblowers on trial in a week, face 10 years in jail
This is one of the clearest cases of tax justice versus tax haven ‘justice.’ From Change.org via the Support Antoine Deltour campaign: a call to get involved in support of the main #Luxleaks whistleblower, Antoine Deltour, and two others accused with him. Please share this: the case has seen greater support among Francophone communities than among those of other languages: let’s help redress the balance. The #Luxleaks
Read the full article…Five myths about tax havens
TJN’s Nicholas Shaxson has an article in the Washington Post entitled Five Myths about Tax havens. The myths go like this: Tax havens protect vulnerable people against despotic governments, unjust laws and political turmoil. Tax havens are good for high-tax nations. Besides Switzerland, most tax havens are small tropical islands. Being a tax haven makes a country rich. Cutting corporate
Read the full article…Panama makes a concession – and G20 offers some buzzwords
From the Buenos Aires Herald, on Friday: “Panama has caved into the broad front of criticism over its banking practices and has decided to adopt international tax reporting standards, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) chief José Ángel Gurría said yesterday, calling the turnaround a beneficial impact of the “Panama Papers” controversy.” Which is good news, as far
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