Financial Transparency Coalition

PARIS - Investors who want to ensure their money supports ethical concerns should add tax behaviour to the criteria by which companies are judged, Christian Aid says today.

The tax deal between the UK and Switzerland initialed today is reported to:

retrospectively tax existing banking relationships in Switzerland, persons resident in the UK should be given one chance to make an anonymous lump-sum tax payment. The size of this tax burden will vary from between 19% to 34% of the assets in question, and will be determined based on the duration of the client relationship as well as the initial and final amount of the capital. Instead of such a payment, those affected should also have the possibility of disclosing their banking relationship in Switzerland to the British authorities.

To...

As the Wall Street Journal notes this morning:

It’s time to move on to other shores for European banks serving wealthy clients: Switzerland will remain famous for its cheese but not for its banking secret anymore. Monday ABN Amro, the Netherlands’ third biggest bank, announced the decision to sell its private banking operations in Switzerland to local operator Union Bancaire Privee. The move can be seen as the start of a migration of smaller non-Swiss banks from a country which was the perfect place for tax evaders for decades.

I have suggested that if we are to reform offshore we have to start at home, and have detailed a programme of reform that many governments would have to undertake. I have also suggested a programme of reform for secrecy jurisdictions and for the international arena that regulates those secrecy jurisdictions. But that is not enough. Regulation enforces rules. The fact is that hearts and minds also have to be won over for change to be effective in the long run. For this to happen there needs to be reform in the...