From the European Green Party: The full report finds that IKEA structured itself to dodge €1 billion in taxes over the last 6 years using onshore European tax havens. … [Read more...]
Taxing corporations
Why Google (and other multinationals) are still not paying their fair share of corporation tax
This guest blog by Tommaso Faccio of Nottingham business school complements a guest blog we ran on Friday by Sol Picciotto, also about Google's all-important tax affairs. Why Google (and other multinationals) are still not paying their fair share of corporation tax Google says that it pays the … [Read more...]
HSBC opts to stay in ‘competitive’ London. (It was never going to leave anyway)
From the Fools' Gold blog, yesterday: There's been a lot of talk for a long time about a threat from globe-trotting HSBC to move its headquarters from London to Hong Kong. It seems there's been a resolution of the question for now, of sorts. As Bloomberg puts it: "HSBC Holdings Plc … [Read more...]
TTIP threatens ability to enforce fair taxes on corporations – report
In light of a new report showing how corporations are using secretive corporate courts to undermine national tax sovereignty, TJN has signed a letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron calling on him to call a halt to negotiations on so-called Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions … [Read more...]
Which countries have the right to tax Google’s income?
Recently, amid the furore over Google's surprisingly low tax payments in the UK and in other countries, it has been suggested, as one observer put it to us: "The claim is that international tax law accrues profits to where products are created, and not where sales are made. For example, a UK … [Read more...]
PwC: using ‘competitiveness’ as crowbar to lobby for mining cos
From Fools' Gold: Recently we wrote an article entitled The Ideologists of the Competitiveness Agenda, in which we fingered the Big Four firm of accountants as among the most important vectors for the general idea that countries simply have to 'compete' in certain ways: namely, to shower goodies … [Read more...]
Global Alliance for Tax Justice jumps to top 10 of global rankings
Congratulations to our partners at the Global Alliance for Tax Justice who have jumped straight in to number ten position in the International Tax Review's global ranking of who's who in the tax world. … [Read more...]
Nigel Lawson, not the corporate income tax, has had his day
Responding to the UK government's poor handling of tax negotiations with Google, Nigel Lawson, climate change denier and architect of one of the biggest boom-bust recessions of modern history, has told the Daily Telegraph that the corporate income tax has "had its day". Instead he proposes a … [Read more...]
Europe’s Anti Tax Avoidance Package: adding fuel to the fire?
The European Commission has announced: "The European Commission has today opened up a new chapter in its campaign for fair, efficient and growth-friendly taxation in the EU with new proposals to tackle corporate tax avoidance. The Anti Tax Avoidance Package calls on Member States to take a … [Read more...]
TJN calls on EC to investigate all of the UK’s secret tax deals
Here is the text of a letter of complaint that TJN will be handing in to the European Commission at its office in London this afternoon. On 23rd January 2016 the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, tweeted from Davos that the UK Government had struck a deal with Google over its past … [Read more...]
TJN calls for public country by country reporting. A few hours later . . .
This morning Alex Cobham, TJN's Director of Research, called for public country-by-country reporting, in an interview with the BBC's flagship Today programme (19:20ish). "Country-by-country reporting: that was actually a Tax Justice Network proposal, going back to our establishment in 2003; but … [Read more...]
Taxing Google (and Facebook, Twitter, Uber and the rest)
Guest blog from TJN senior adviser Professor Sol Picciotto The announcement of the deal struck by Google with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has aroused much speculation. The term ‘permanent establishment’ has even been mentioned in some august media outlets, such as the Financial … [Read more...]
Google’s taxes and the economic illiteracy of the Mayor of London
No, not the Lord Mayor of London, but the Mayor of London, a certain Boris Johnson, who's frequently tipped to be Britain's next Prime Minister. Given that Britain is arguably the most important player in the global offshore system, this man's opinions deserve close scrutiny. The topic at hand is … [Read more...]
Conference: No Taxes, No Development – Berlin, 18th February 2016
Conference No taxes, no development Ways to a just taxation of multinational corporations … [Read more...]
Review: new book on Capital Flight from Africa
Over at Uncounted, Alex Cobham (our Research Director) has written a review of a new tome for tax justice bookshelves: Capital flight from Africa: Causes, effects and policy issues, Ibi Ajayi & Léonce Ndikumana (eds.), 2015, Oxford University Press. His review begins: "This new volume … [Read more...]
