Financial Transparency Coalition

Yesterday ActionAid released a new report, detailing how tax changes being brought forward in the Budget could result in tax losses of £4 billion a year for poor countries and £1 billion for the UK. These changes will make it much easier for multinational companies to use tax havens to dodge their bills, particularly in the developing world.

ATHENS - Efforts to reform and rebuild Greece’s economy in future will be undermined because the country’s government, businesses and civil servants not only fail to stop corruption but actively participate in it. The warning comes today from Transparency International Greece’s first ever assessment of the ability of important national institutions to fight corruption.

Using consistently credible sources the resulting estimate of tax evasion in the European Union is approximately €860 billion a year. As the report notes, estimating tax avoidance, which is the other key component of the tax gap in Europe, is harder. However, an estimate that it might be €150 billion a year is made in this report. In combination it is therefore likely that tax evasion and tax avoidance might cost the governments of the European Union member states €1 trillion a year. These losses can only be accurately located with regard to tax evasion. Italy loses the most...

Today is the 10th anniversary of Euro as the zone's single currency. On February 28th, 2002, all of the various currencies from Eurozone countries, which had been linked with fixed exchange rates to each other and the Euro for a trial period, ceased to be legal tender between member states. A decade later, the survival of the single currency seems to be in question thanks to the events inside Greece, Italy, and elsewhere.