Bloomberg tax star Jesse Drucker has another fine article out about the Spanish retailer Inditex, the parent of high street retail giant Zara. We would urge you to read it. Among many other things, it contains: "In the past five years, Inditex has shifted almost $2 billion in profits to a tiny … [Read more...]
Inequality & Democracy
Ernst & Young: why Dubai’s first conflict gold audit was silenced
We have remarked before on Dubai's role as a particularly egregious and recalcitrant secrecy jurisdiction, harbouring some of the world's worst scoundrels and their money: the likes of Indian master criminal Dawood Ibrahim, the arms dealer Viktor Bout, and many others. Dubai ranks 16th in our … [Read more...]
Links Feb 24
G20 Committed To 'Global Response' To BEPS Tax-News See also: G20 Agrees on Automatic Tax Data Sharing, OECD Says Bloomberg, and Multinationals unfazed by G20 tax crackdown The Conversation … [Read more...]
New report: Growth in Africa fails to curb soaring inequality
From TJN-Africa and Christian Aid: February 24 2014 GROWTH IN AFRICA FAILS TO CURB SOARING INEQUALITY, SAYS NEW REPORT Unprecedented economic growth in a number of African countries is going hand in hand with soaring inequality, which national tax systems are failing to address, according … [Read more...]
Links Feb 21
Members of the European Parliament take their first step to curb corporate secrecy and phantom firms Eurodad See also: MEPs vote to name trust beneficiaries in public registries STEP … [Read more...]
Links Feb 20
What Russian money sloshing back to Cyprus teaches us about tax havens Quartz "Building a financial system to serve foreign clients first doesn’t necessarily improve a country’s fiscal condition, as fiscal collapses in places like the Caymans have shown before." See also this months Taxcast … [Read more...]
Foreign investment – smaller than you might believe
From Jesse Griffiths, Eurodad, with permission. Foreign investment – much smaller than you might believe You may have seen that foreign direct investment (FDI) was judged last month to have finally regained pre-crisis levels, and that a record percentage of all FDI – 52% - went to developing … [Read more...]
Links Feb 17
Tax havens: 'Why do we tolerate this?' devex Interview with Eva Joly, chair of the Committee on Development at the European Parliament … [Read more...]
Links Feb 14
Tackling tax evasion: First Standard Automatic The Economist See also: Global tax standard attracts 42 countries Financial Times (paywall) - reports cite TJN's response to the new OECD report on automatic information exchange … [Read more...]
Should donors boost aid to Pakistan if it won’t tax its élites?
The U.S.-based Tax Analysts has just published a fascinating article with the bland title Should Donor Countries Push Tax Reform? The answer, we think, is generally 'yes' - though it depends, of course, what we mean by 'reform.' The article notes: … [Read more...]
Links Feb 13
OECD takes aim at tax anomalies across borders Irish Examiner OECD head Ángel Gurría said: "... the options are simple: If you cannot tax the big guys you are left with the little guys and middle class to tax, and even if you tax them up to their noses, it won’t be enough. And then politics … [Read more...]
BVI tax haven floats 20 years in prison for whistleblowers
From the ICIJ: "The British Virgin Islands have never been accused of taking financial secrecy lightly. But last week, members of the BVI legislature took a step toward raising the territory’s noted secrecy protections to new heights. … [Read more...]
Links Feb 12
BVI Considers Tough Prison Sentences For DataLeaks ICIJ Google Take Down Stuart Syvret Blogspot Rico Sorda "The Jersey oligarchs and their protectors in London think that they can do what no corrupt regime around the world had been able to do – and keep embarrassing exposures about them off the … [Read more...]
Links Feb 11
Fragile States 2014: Domestic Revenue Mobilisation OECD A Solution for the Inequality Politics of Post-2015? Center for Global Development … [Read more...]
London, the Great Sucking Sound, and the Finance Curse
From Aditya Chakrabortty in the UK's Guardian newspaper: some statistics that are classics of the "Finance Curse" analysis - where an oversized financial centre begins to weigh on the rest of an economy, rather than to support it. … [Read more...]
