Financial Transparency Coalition

Every year, developing countries lose around $1 trillion per year to illicit financial flows, which are the proceeds of tax evasion, crime, and corruption. They undermine accountable government, enable organized crime on a massive scale, and make it more difficult for governments to provide basic services. Illicit financial outflows dwarf foreign aid, and represent one of the biggest impediments to development in Africa.

In a response to the OECD’s February report Addressing Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, 58 campaigning organisations say it’s time to make multinationals pay their fair share of tax. Eurodad, Christian Aid and others call on the OECD and G20 to work with the United Nations Tax Committee and governments in developing countries to define new rules for the taxation of multinational companies.

This paper, written by Eurodad for CONCORD’s Aidwatch coalition sets out all the financial resources potentially available for development, examines their key characteristics, and discusses their poverty and sustainable development impacts, and the implications for aid. This discussion could not come at a more important time. Aid is under severe pressure as donors seek to cut budgets and to reorient aid to more clearly attribute direct ‘results’ to it. Recent initiatives at European and donor level have sought to change the focus of the aid debate towards stimulating the private sector, including emphasizing the role of private flows, particularly foreign...

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) secured a big step towards the financial transparency needed to combat tax dodging last week when they made EU Finance Ministers agree on country-by-country reporting for EU banks from 2014. This represents a major victory after years of campaigning by Eurodad members and allies. The deal under the EU’s Capital Requirement Directive is timely and it can – and should – influence the final agreement on the Accounting Directive, where country-by-country reporting is still on the table.