Financial Transparency Coalition

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is moving towards implementing a new tool for catching tax evaders: automatic exchange of financial information (AEOI). While the name might sound a bit confusing, the idea is pretty simple. Governments in the system will share financial information with each other at designated intervals, enabling authorities to find individuals and corporations that are stashing assets in foreign countries to evade taxes. While it’s a welcome initiative, we have serious concerns about the OECD's efforts thus far to include developing countries. Developing countries are some of the hardest hit by tax evasion and...

Illicit financial flows affect countries all over the world. Unfortunately, developing countries seem to suffer the greatest due to illicit outflows. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, loses roughly 5.7% of its overall Gross Domestic Product every year to illicit flows, according to research from FTC member Global Financial Integrity. Along with advocating for strong policy changes, it’s important that a robust and informed press investigates cases of tax evasion, corruption, and harmful tax practices that rob governments of much needed revenue.

For a while now, we've been writing about the ongoing effort by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to create new standards for the exchange of tax and financial information between countries. The new system would help clamp down on corrupt individuals that hide their money in countries with strict secrecy laws and low tax rates. While there are many questions still remaining about implementation, one thing is clear: developing countries must be included. Some of the largest cases of illicit financial flows involve money being siphoned...

The IMF has a major new Policy Paper out entitled Spillovers in International Taxation, looking at the effects that one country’s tax rules and practices can have on others. Of course the IMF would never be so rude to some of its most powerful member states as to explicitly say what is in our headline – but that’s what we read between the lines. “Spillovers” in international tax are all about tax haven activity, particularly when those spillovers are deliberately crafted. Now that we’ve read it, we conclude that this is a really important document. It tears...