Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) new recommendations to fight multinational corporate tax avoidance look robust from the onset, but there’s something missing. Since the most vital reporting information will remain out of the reach of ordinary citizens, the recommendations don’t do enough to bring transparency to a global financial system badly in need of it. The OECD’s project on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) is intended to crack down on the ability of corporations to move profits overseas, through mis-invoicing trade transactions to avoid taxes and other dubious practices. With nearly a trillion...

We often think of tax havens as tropical islands or tiny nations nestled in the mountains. We know most of them are geographically and demographically small. Very small. Given their huge reputations, just how small they are just might surprise you. Ireland, which is well known for its emerald hills and low tax rates, is about the same size as South Carolina. Luxembourg, a tax haven nestled in Western Europe between France and Germany, is about 2,500 square kilometers, or about a third of size of Rhode Island. Bermuda, a group of islands off the coast of South Carolina, is...

Tomorrow, Heather Lowe of FTC member organization Global Financial Integrity will participate in a panel discussion organized by the U.S. Department of State. The event, hosted at the OpenGov Hub in Washington D.C., will also include officials from the World Bank's Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative, the State Department, and Transparency International USA. The discussion will focus on the inherent links between governance and corruption, and how to combat them. If you aren't based in Washington, or are unable to attend the event, there's no need to worry, as a live stream will be available on the Internet. You can submit questions...

If you have had much contact with the disciple of economics in the last year, you’ve heard of the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, written by French economist Thomas Piketty. And Capital concerns two subjects that are very near and dear to us at the Financial Transparency Coalition: inequality and taxes. Piketty’s book is all the rage among economists and policy wonks. Perhaps for good reason. In a unique exploration of a new dataset, Piketty parses through literally centuries of tax data to discern long-term trends in inequality and wealth. His conclusions are broad and many, but...