Financial Transparency Coalition

As stuff.co.nz reports:

Tax haven activist Nicholas Shaxson has hit out at New Zealand for opposing a plan to create a UN body to tackle tax haven abuse. Shaxson, who has become famous following the publication of Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men Who Stole the World, said New Zealand is letting down the developing world. He has also revealed that New Zealand has a growing reputation as an offshore haven itself. He predicts New Zealand will appear on the Tax Justice Network’s Financial Secrecy Index by 2013. In January, New Zealand’s permanent mission to the UN in New York said...

Do tax havens contribute to African poverty? Reuters (Blog), April 8, 2011 Money laundering a hard reality in India Business Times (Singapore), April 8, 2011 How to Pay No Taxes Bloomberg Business Week, April 7, 2011 U.S. Seeks HSBC Customers’ Names as Part of Tax Inquiry The New York Times, April 7, 2011 Wanted: A

I have the following article in the latest edition of the London Review of Books:

In his budget last month George Osborne announced that if in the future a UK company runs its internal banking arrangements through a tax haven subsidiary it will benefit from a special tax rate of just 5.75 per cent of the resulting profits. The rate is exceptionally low: the same activity undertaken in the UK is taxed at 23 per cent. It is a change that will delight corporate tax avoiders everywhere: the UK will now condone the use of tax havens in locations such as...

Financial incentives are used in almost every context where the public good is at odds with individual utility. As I poured over my tax returns last weekend I discovered that other than the fact that the U.S. tax system is massively complicated, it is also the perfect example of financial incentives gone awry. As an economist, I feel fairly strongly that I should be mathematically and logically competent to do my taxes the old fashioned way—with pen and paper. I had to repeat that method to the “second look” guy at H&R Block about 13 times,...