Financial Transparency Coalition

India is beginning to take the threat tax havens pose to it very seriously, partly because of the work my friends at Global Financial Integrity have done in exposing the enormous costs to India of tax haven abuse. The Hindu Business Line reports just how seriously the issue is being taken in the 2011 budget:

Transactions with entities in ‘non-cooperative’ jurisdictions that do not effectively exchange information with India may soon attract TDS (tax deduction at source) of at least 30 per cent. This is one of the several ‘anti-avoidance’ measures that the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, has proposed in...

The Independent has reported testimony in a UK employment tribunal yesterday where a butler and housekeeper are claiming unfair dismissal from their jobs at an Oxfordshire estate where they thought they worked for a man named Kevin Cash. However, there’s a twist:

Yesterday, to add confusion to their grievance, an employment tribunal was told that the couple had not been employed by Mr Cash. They were actually working for a trust based in a Caribbean tax haven, and therefore had no valid claim against him, his lawyers claimed. The mysterious Mr Cash is reputed to be worth £500m, but has...

I note the new Chair of Cayman Finance seems determined to continue in the tradition of his predecessor. Interim Chairman Roy McTaggart , who recently succeeded Anthony Travers OBE, has sent a letter to Ronnie Campbell, MP because  he referred to the Cayman Islands as a tax haven during a debate in the House of Commons last week. McTaggart said, according to Cayman News Service, that:

Cayman is a fully transparent jurisdiction and not a place where individuals or corporations are able to “hide money”.

And, of course, the ritual denial that Cayman is a tax haven was delivered. I’d have hoped that,...

The economics editor of the Independent has written a review of Nick Shaxson’s book, Treasure Islands. To be candid, it’s easily the most cynical review to date. As he concludes:

part from new potatoes, gold-top milk and some tourism, Jersey has little going for it economically. Nor do most of the British overseas territories fingered by Shaxson - which are only nominally under UK jurisdiction, a point he neglects or misunderstands. Most are too small and poor to be independent states, even with their financial income. As a second-best they have been granted self-government and they are, uncomfortably for the...