Financial Transparency Coalition

This week TIME Magazine opened polling to their readers to weigh in on their nominations for Person of the Year. Generally, I think their picks are pretty good, although sometimes their nominations are a little off the mark (Roger Goodell, really?). Anyway, the nominations got me to thinking what a Transparency Person of the Year would look like. Keeping with TIME’s definition, this would be someone who influenced the news, for better or worse, on issues related to financial transparency. Here are my picks. CARL LEVIN. I’m going to go with the most obvious one first. If I did this...

In 2010 Congress enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which aims to combat tax evasion by U.S. citizens holding investments in offshore accounts. Under this law, the IRS and the U.S. Department of the Treasury require U.S. taxpayers holding financial assets on foreign soil to report those assets. FATCA also requires foreign financial institutions to report certain information about U.S. taxpayers directly to the IRS. The Treasury planned to phase in the law’s requirements in several stages. Starting in 2013, the IRS would require participating banks to conduct due diligence for identifying new and pre-existingU.S. accounts and...

After a long, hard battle, President Obama won a second term from voters last night. The media has pointed out he’s not taking much time to celebrate; it’s time to back to the long, hard work of governing. In that spirit, this is a good opportunity to check the pulse of several important transparency-enhancing legislative initiatives that are on the table in Congress right now. Over the next four years, the President and his administration will have opportunities to promote transparency in the financial system, fight corruption worldwide, and enhance tax fairness, both abroad and at home. In that...

In September at the turn of this century, the leaders of the world convened at the Millennium Assembly of the United Nations. The Assembly was the culmination of nearly a decade of United Nations summits and conferences to address development and poverty. It was 2000, however, that the world’s leaders adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a commitment to a noble new partnership to drastically reduce poverty worldwide. All 193 member states of the United Nations and 23 organizations agreed to achieve a set of eight goals by 2015. They are: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; ...