Financial Transparency Coalition

The ConDem government has announced a further development in its plan to turn the UK into a tax haven. As the FT reports this morning:

Multimillionaire foreigners prepared to invest their money in Britain will find it easier to make a home in the UK under government plans to relax immigration rules for the super-rich. The Home Office will shortly propose changes to “investor visas” to encourage more rich people to live and invest in the UK.

Under the plans:

An article the other week in the Ugandan Daily Monitor quotes an official from the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), Mr. Patrick Mukiibi, on the value and implications of illicit flows from that country. According to the article, Uganda loses UGX 2 trillion (approx. USD 866 million) annually through “tax crime”, also termed “economic and tax fraud”. The Ugandan Ministry of Finance says that the current fiscal year (2010/2011) government budget is UGX 7.5 trillion (approx. USD 3.2 billion), and it will need loans and other development assistance to cover 26 percent of this. In other words, the article...

When a street vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire in a demonstration against his government last month, he ignited a cascade of protests in his own country and abroad. Many of the Tunisian protesters were unemployed college graduates, doctors, and lawyers, who rose up against the rampant poverty and persistent unemployment, which have formed a backdrop against the lavish lifestyles of President Zine el-Abdine Ben Ali and his family. Over the last two decades of their reign, it appears that the Ben Ali family treated the country’s wealth like their own personal treasure chest, buying stakes...

In November 2010, the European Commission (EC) opened a public consultation to “seek stakeholders’ views on financial reporting on a country-by-country basis by Multinational Companies (MNCs).” Country-by-country reporting standards would require that MNCs provide information on the profits earned and taxes paid in each of the countries where they operate. Eurodad and other civil society organisations believe that such reporting standards would enhance financial transparency and would provide crucial information needed by developing countries to enhance collection of taxes on the profits made by companies in their countries. While several NGOs, including Eurodad, contributed to the public consultation with a...