Financial Transparency Coalition

This week the Treasury Department began assembling administrative options for deterring or preventing U.S. companies from inverting—or reorganizing overseas to avoid paying federal taxes. This move follows on the heels of a strong statement from President Obama who accused inverting firms of "cherry-picking the rules.” As he put it: "My attitude is I don't care if it's legal, it's wrong.” Particularly common among pharmaceutical and life-sciences companies, inversions are primarily a means for U.S. companies to avoid corporate taxes. In an inversion, a smaller foreign company “acquires” a large U.S. firm, allowing the domestic firm to...

The importance of tax for development is widely accepted. It is also increasingly being acknowledged that a company’s approach to taxation is an integral part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Against this background Christian Aid has produced a briefing “Tax and Sustainability: A framework for businesses and socially responsible investors”. This framework can be used by ethical investors to asses whether a company’s tax policy is responsible in its design or implementation.

Christian Aid's David McNair Recounts His Trip to Washington, DC for the International Monetary Fund's Spring Meetings Last Week Extreme turbulence and black clouds were the order of the day as I flew through a storm into Washington, DC. Ironic, then, that I was on my way to the institution tasked with picking up the pieces of the financial crisis and managing these turbulent economic times. But the International Monetary Fund (IMF) itself has not escaped from the crisis unchanged. The new ‘fund’ seems less driven by economic orthodoxy at the expense of other perspectives and more open to criticism –...

The private sector plays a pivotal role in fighting corruption worldwide. Transparency International’s Global Corruption Report 2009 documents in unique detail the many corruption risks for businesses, ranging from small entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa to multinationals from Europe and North America. More than 75 experts examine the scale, scope and devastating consequences of a wide range of corruption issues, including bribery and policy capture, corporate fraud, cartels, corruption in supply chains and transnational transactions, emerging challenges for carbon trading markets, sovereign wealth funds and, growing economic centres, such as Brazil, China and India.