Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON – The UK government’s decision to back a ‘publish-what-you-pay’ standard for mining and other ‘extractive’ companies across the world is an exciting and welcome move which will challenge corruption in the oil, mining and gas sectors but does not go far enough to tackle the massive damage done by tax dodging and financial secrecy, Christian Aid says today.

This year, the European Union will review a number of European laws that spell out what types of information companies must disclose in their annual financial reports. Although at first sight this change in accounting rules seems like a dull technical exercise, well designed and transparent accounting standards have the potential to lift the veil of opacity that has contributed to the recent global financial drama and which, for years, has been preventing developing countries from properly taxing the activities of multinational companies operating within their jurisdictions. Civil society groups are calling on the European Union to live up to...

The Financial Times is running an editorial today entitled a taxing world which is mostly very good. First, though, after a brief exploration of the UK Uncut phenomenon ("the group has a point") there is something we’d disagree with. The FT says this:

Tax avoidance is legal and legitimate. Unlike tax evasion, it is not obviously immoral to exploit the tax code to pay the least that is legally required.

It is up to government to plug the leaks, the FT said. No. For starters, as we constantly argue, what is legal is not necessarily what...

Eurodad and the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development invite you to the conference “Fighting illicit flows from developing countries – what next for the EU agenda?” in Brussels on December 7^th and 8^th 2010. In the past few months, G20 leaders have expressed concern about the financial integrity of secrecy jurisdictions and the need to regulate them. In November 2009, they committed to ensuring that developing countries fully benefit from international measures to establish a more transparent and cooperative framework. In June 2010, EU Heads of State...