Financial Transparency Coalition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 20 DECEMBER 2016 In latest position on AMLD revisions, Council aims to keep ‘legitimate interest’ barrier intact, delay implementation by up to three years Despite being just nine months removed from the Panama Papers, some European Union member states are already trying to back out of commitments made to create fully public

The Tax Justice Network an FTC member, just released the July installment of TaxCast, a podcast featuring a detailed look at the previous month's tax news. In the Tax Justice Network’s latest podcast: What really happened at the Google shareholder meeting vote on a proposal for ethical tax principles? Plus: we discuss what the new tax haven-friendly EU Commission President might do (or not do), anti-democratic moves in Hong Kong from the big four accountancy firms, and: forget the OECD’s global tax reform – developing countries can and are doing it...

In the process to revise Europe's 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD), European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to approve the creation of public registers of information on the real owners of companies, trusts, and other legal entities in the EU. Public registers of the beneficial owners (real owners), would help greatly in the fight against corruption, trafficking, tax evasion, and other types of illicit financial flows that are perpetrated with the help of anonymous companies with hidden ownership. However, the European Parliament's input is only one piece of the puzzle.

DG TAXUD, the taxation and customs department of the EU civil service, is working on a strategy on tax havens and unfair tax competition to be released in the last quarter of the year. This is an extremely welcome step, as the communication addresses several key issues. It recognises that not only double taxation but also double non-taxation is a problem when working out how to tax cross border wealth and income; proposes the introduction of automatic information exchange at EU level; and explores several concrete measures against non-cooperative tax jurisdictions and aggressive tax planning. However, in many ways...