An event is to be held in Berlin, with TJN participation, on June 9: Tax Havens in Crisis: Transparency and New Rules for Tax and Regulatory Havens Participants: Jack Blum (Attorney and US government consultant); John Christensen (Tax Justice Network); Heike Göbel (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung); Gerhard Schick (Alliance ’90/The Greens)
Banks employ large teams of highly paid people to devise transactions mainly for the purpose of avoiding tax. These activities seem to be far more profitable than the humdrum business of managing payments and channelling savings towards investment. Why?
When an entire global financial system collapses, it is reasonable to expect some bickering over the ultimate fixing of things. Rumors of dissention and talk of stimulus-paved roads to hell made everyone squeamish going into the April summit of the G20 group of large and industrialized nations in London. French President Nicolas Sarkozy even threatened to walk out on the whole thing if he didn’t get his way.
The dominance of “offshore” fund centres such as Luxembourg and Dublin could be under threat from the UK following a series of tax changes in last week’s UK Budget.
IFIs have been contributing to the advent of tax havens in the Latin America. According to a study by Christian Aid, in spite of it not being possible to consider some Latin American countries as tax havens, it has been shown that several of these countries have established privileged tax systems to promote foreign direct investment (FDI).
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has removed all four countries from its blacklist of tax havens. The blacklist published last week included Costa Rica, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay. OECD chief Angel Gurria said in Paris that all four countries had now agreed to adopt its regulations.
Preview of tax justice campaign action on Jersey, plus look ahead to G20 finance ministers meeting
Put People First’s policy platform report. It’s our analysis of the job ahead of the G20 leaders, and a 12 point plan that could go a long way towards delivering democratic governance of the economy for jobs, justice and climate.
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