Secret Offshore Deals Deprive Africa of Billions in Natural Resource Dollars ICIJ "The Panama Papers show politicians and mining, oil and gas interests benefit from secrecy and dubious multimillion dollar transfers" Staunching tax "haemorrhage" from poorest countries United Nations Radio See … [Read more...]
Inequality & Democracy
Advocacy tools on tax policy and international cooperation for human rights
Our friends at Righting Finance have released their fourth in a series of advocacy tools on tax policy and international cooperation for human rights. The aim of these advocacy tools is to assist education and dissemination of the standards on tax policy and human rights contained in a report … [Read more...]
Some countries “lose” 2/3 of exports to misinvoicing
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...]
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...]
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...]
UN calls UK to account over impact of unjust tax laws
A United Nations body has called on the single largest financial secrecy jurisdiction in the world – the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies – to account for the human rights impacts of its unjust tax policies at home and abroad. The call was issued by the UN … [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...]
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...]
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...]
Kenya tax haven approaching: secrecy to be enforced with prison terms
We have for a while been sounding alarms about the emergence of (yet) another tax haven/secrecy jurisdiction in Kenya. A few months ago we quoted the newspaper African Arguments: “Anti-corruption campaigner John Githongo has warned that in this setting, the NIFC “would be like a financial crime … [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...]
