From UNCTAD, the UN Conference on Trade and Development, via email: "Some commodity dependent developing countries are losing as much as 67% of their exports worth billions of dollars to trade misinvoicing, according to a fresh study by UNCTAD, which for the first time analyses this issue for … [Read more...]
Corporate Tax
Links Jul 14
African MPs support push against illicit financial flows Tax Justice Network - Africa Illicit financial inflows and low tax revenue bedevil Africa’s development BDlive New Research Shows Transparency Does Not Negatively Affect Business Competitiveness Transparency International … [Read more...]
New questions over Juncker’s role in Amazon Luxembourg affair
Jean-Claude, Juncker, the President of the European Commission, has long tried to distance himself from his role as one of the key architects of Luxembourg's crime-fueled tax haven factory. An excellent new investigation by Newsweek now reminds us of his efforts to display whiter-than-white … [Read more...]
Links Jul 12
Asian Development Bank Updates Policy In Wake Of Global Tax Developments Uganda: Free Zones Authority to Push for Tax Incentives allAfrica / The Observer (Kampala) See also: Visualising Uganda’s (and others’) tax treaties Martin Hearson's Blog, and our recent blog: Quote of the day – tax … [Read more...]
Top tax expert: Big 4 “accountants of fortune” must be broken up
In March The Economist magazine rang alarm bells (again) about a rise in concentrated market power: a problem where the biggest firms get ever bigger and more like monopolies, making it easy to extract wealth from the rest of us (as opposed to creating wealth.) This, in turn fosters steeper … [Read more...]
Links Jul 7
Revenue Mobilization in the Developing World: Changes, Challenges and Chances Review of International Political Economy Swiss banking sector seeks to enlist Britain for EU negotiations Reuters France, Luxembourg roll out red carpet for post-Brexit business Yahoo News Panama Papers: the … [Read more...]
Links Jul 5
Poverty amidst plenty: How Africans are robbed of benefits of mineral wealth Pambazuka News Zambia's New Mining Tax Regime May Fail the Test of Time National Resource Governance Institute Rich landowners are reaping billions from a tax loophole meant to benefit India's poor farmers Bloomberg … [Read more...]
Anti-tax, anti-regulation sirens already emerging after Brexit
Just before the Brexit vote we quoted Adam Posen, President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, about what might happen in a post-Brexit Britain: "If you’re anti-regulation fantasists to begin with, you start going down the path, ‘Oh we can become an even more offshore center. We … [Read more...]
Two new transparency advances, in UK and US
From Global Witness: "Information on who ultimately owns and controls British companies goes live for the first time today." That's good news, amid all the Brexit brouhaha (and idiotic and dangerous plans to privatise the UK's Land Registry.) Meanwhile, the FACT coalition in the United States … [Read more...]
Links Jun 30
LuxLeaks: Luxembourg court condemned for guilty verdicts The Parliament See also: Grand dodgy - The good deeds of the Luxembourg leakers do not go unpunished The Economist, Campaigners condemn punishment of Luxleaks whistleblowers who acted in the public interest Global Alliance for Tax Justice, … [Read more...]
Brexit gets worse as London seeks to wriggle free from UK
Cross-posted from Fools' Gold. We have our own particular reasons for disliking Brexit - the recent decision by the UK to leave the European Union. In a pre-Brexit analysis we quoted Adam Posen, director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who articulated what is probably … [Read more...]
Links Jun 28
The Great Trump Tax Mysteries: Is He Hiding Loopholes, Errors, or Something More Serious? Vanity Fair By TJN's @nickshaxson, author of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World Join a special "fanzone" in Paris for the match between multinationals and whistleblowers PFJ (In … [Read more...]
Luxembourg on trial as Luxleaks whistleblowers await tomorrow’s verdict
Tomorrow afternoon the "LuxLeaks" trial will end and the two whistleblowers, Antoine Deltour and Raphaël Halet, as well as the journalist Eduard Perrin, will know whether they will be punished or not, for breaking Luxembourg's secrecy regime. They face up to 18 months in jail for exposing lurid … [Read more...]
Links Jun 23
Defending public services together! PSI "We need to ensure multinationals pay their fair share of tax and that governments use this revenue to drive public sector growth through investment in universal, quality public services" Opinion for the public hearing of the Finance Committee of the … [Read more...]
More unfair tax treaties may be renegotiated
This time it's Uganda. From Martin Hearson: "The government announced in its latest budget that it has finished formulating its new tax treaty policy, and will be renegotiating treaties that don't comply. Seatini and ActionAid Uganda will no doubt chalk this up as a success." In … [Read more...]
