Financial Transparency Coalition

This year, the European Union will review a number of European laws that spell out what types of information companies must disclose in their annual financial reports. Although at first sight this change in accounting rules seems like a dull technical exercise, well designed and transparent accounting standards have the potential to lift the veil of opacity that has contributed to the recent global financial drama and which, for years, has been preventing developing countries from properly taxing the activities of multinational companies operating within their jurisdictions. Civil society groups are calling on the European Union to live up to...

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...

WASHINGTON, DC – Global Financial Integrity (GFI) joined a coalition of professional and civil society organizations calling upon the Senate Judiciary Committee to support a provision in S. 23, The Patent Reform Act of 2011, which will eliminate tax strategy patents today.

The FT has noted:

New York state prosecutors could file civil fraud charges against Ernst & Young for allegedly helping Lehman Brothers hide debt, according to a person familiar with the matter. The office of Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general who will be sworn in as the state’s governor next month, could file a lawsuit as early as this week, this person said. If a lawsuit is filed, it would be the first allegations involving Lehman since the bank filed for bankruptcy in 2008, and the first charges against an accounting firm in...