June 9th, 2011
David Spencer, a Senior Advisor to the Tax Justice Network, has just delivered a hard-hitting speech at a major United Nations
meeting on
transfer pricing, an arcane-sounding but extraordinarily important issue in the field of international tax.
Spencer's speech is
here. It is an outspoken document, couched in diplomatic language, which contains too much important stuff for us to summarise in detail on this blog - so here is a short summary. Read the whole document for the full effect.
Companies can manipulate their internal trade ("transfer") prices...
June 9th, 2011
People only form companies for economic reasons. There really is no other reason to have one.
Despite that just one in three companies in the UK pay tax. The data is based on the year to March 2010.
All the details on how I got the data is in a report here. The facts are:
a) There were about 2.6 million companies on the Register throughout most of that year.
b) Of these about 500,000 claimed to be dormant.
c) That leaves 2.1 million potentially taxable.
d) But I guessed at least 180,000 of the...
June 8th, 2011
Indian gov't skewered for graft as activists fast
AP, June 8, 2011
Parallel economy booms, but hard to tell how big it is
The Economic Times, June 8, 2011
India wants foreign govts to seize assets of tax evaders
Business Standard, June 8, 2011
India Ki Soch: Crackdown on Baba Ramdev and unanswered questions
Dailybhaskar, June 7, 2011
Arms trade corrupt, says think tank Sipri
BBC, June 6, 2011
DEA agent infiltrated cartel in Colombia
The Boston Globe, June 4, 2011
June 8th, 2011
Global Financial Integrity has been warning about illicit financial flows (IFFs) out of The People's Republic of China for years.
These outflows have ranged from an annual US$169 billion in 2000 to US$344 billion in 2008. Dev Kar, Lead Economist for GFI, notes
trade mispricing, which is the practice of underpricing exports or overpricing imports in order to shift illegally capital abroad, is “the major channel for the transfer of illicit capital from China.” The country is also, by far, the largest transmitter of illicit financial flows...
