Michael Winterbottom's powerful new film, The Emperor's New Clothes, starring comedian Russell Brand and featuring several prominent tax justice campaigners is screening in cinemas now. You can also organise your own film screening here. … [Read more...]
Tax Havens & Financial Crisis
Tax Justice Research Bulletin 1(3)
By Alex Cobham, TJN's Director of Research March 2015. Welcome to the third Tax Justice Research Bulletin, a monthly series dedicated to tracking the latest developments in policy-relevant research on national and international tax. This issue looks at new papers on the responsibilities … [Read more...]
New Report: Ten Reasons to Defend the Corporate Income Tax.
UPDATES 2018 - Tax incentives in mining: minimising risks to revenue, OECD/Intergovernmental forum on mining, minerals, metals, and sustainable development. "Tax incentives are costly, leading many countries to forgo vital revenues in exchange for often illusive benefits. . . there is little … [Read more...]
Small countries, big banks: is Andorra the new Cyprus?
Our quote of the day comes from the introductory paragraph of a Reuters story: "With Andorra now added to the list, how many more examples do we need to see the folly of combining a small country with a large banking system?" That's our quote of the day. The lead angle of the story is one of … [Read more...]
Tweet of the day – London as the front office for global tax avoidance
HSBC, tax evasion and the link to lax financial regulation
Two quotes of the day, both from an article by Prof. Bill Black, a former U.S. bank regulator: "Taxes were once termed the price we paid for civilization, but they now represent the price the wealthy brag to each other about refusing to pay as they pillage civilization." Quite so. And then, … [Read more...]
Quote of the day: tax-evading Greek oligarchs
From an article by UK journalist Paul Mason, published on the eve of the Greek vote: "As for the Greek oligarchs, their misrule long predates the crisis. These are not only the famous shipping magnates, whose industry pays no tax, but the bosses of energy and construction groups and football … [Read more...]
Foreign exchange turmoil brings offshore centres into focus
Moves by the Swiss National Bank to remove the Swiss Franc's currency peg to the Euro has prompted a new round of turmoil in global foreign exchange (FX) markets. We've already written about this from a tax justice perspective, but here's something else. Quite a few currency brokers have gone … [Read more...]
Financing for Whose Development? How Official Development Finance Institutions support Tax Havens
This is an extract from an article by Eurodad's Mathieu Vervynckt, in which he discusses the Third UN Conference on Financing for Development (FfD), set to take place in Addis Ababa next year as a crucial opportunity to discuss both the use of scarce public resources to leverage private sector … [Read more...]
The UK tax havens and broken promises
By Rosie Sharpe, Money Laundering Campaigner at Global Witness. There’s been much progress recently in requiring companies to put the names of the people who own and control them – their so-called beneficial owners – into the public domain. This is really important to tackle the devastation … [Read more...]
Le Prix à Payer – The Price we Pay – screenings in Paris
Harold Crooks' new documentary on how tax dodging and tax havens imperil democracy will have its first European cinema release in France in January 2015. Ahead of the release, the French distributors are arranging special screenings in Paris in mid-December 2014. Full details are here: … [Read more...]
California’s tax hikes versus Kansas’ tax cuts: early results now in
From a new paper by Paul Caron of Pepperdine University and Joseph Bankman of Stanford University: "The conventional wisdom in California two years ago was that raising taxes on the wealthy would harm the economy and doom any politician who dared touch this third rail. Instead, the public … [Read more...]
The Offshore Wrapper: a week in tax justice #39 – a Luxembourg Special
Throw the Junck out When Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured) was elected as the president of the European Commission last May, staff at Wrapper Towers had to go into a darkened room. Others went straight to the bar. … [Read more...]
Occupy protest highlights role of British tax havens
A plucky group of Occupy activists are legally occupying Parliament Square in London, but face surprising levels of harassment by British police. Here is a short video about the occupation, in which the protesters highlight the flags of British tax havens flying across the street from Parliament - … [Read more...]
Quote of the day: City of London and financial fraud
One of a long line of "quotes of the day: this one from 2013, but still relevant today The “race to the weakest supervisor” did not occur only within the U.S. Brooksley Born and a former senior SEC official have confirmed to me that UK regulators directly pitched U.S. financial firms to relocate … [Read more...]
