Financial Transparency Coalition

An imminent “final withholding tax treaty”, will allow Germany to claw back some revenue from tax evasion, but it will also protect Swiss bank secrecy and undermine the prospect of automatic information exchange. Swiss and German negotiators will probably conclude the deal on 10^th August. The deal will then have to be approved through the respective national legislative processes, so there will be opportunities for civil society to mobilize opposition and generate debate about information exchange. A withholding tax will be charged on income from savings and investments of German citizens with Swiss accounts, i.e those who had previously evaded...

Today we would like to highlight two recent blogs from two of Eurodad members, which discuss some positive developments in the tax transparency arena. Firstly, following Action Aid’s recent report on SABMiller and its abusive transfer pricing practices in developing countries, several tax authorities in Africa are conducting further investigations on the company’s operations. “African tax authorities have not only acknowledged the impact of ActionAid’s recent report highlighting tax avoidance by the global brewing company SABMiller, but also committed to doing something new in response to it. Meeting last week to discuss our report under the auspices of the African...

Publish What You Pay and Eurodad have launched a briefing paper (PDF) calling on the EU to propose legally binding measures to require natural resource companies to publish key financial information for each country and project in which they operate. In recent months, civil society groups working on financial transparency and on tax and development have actively engaged the European Commission and other European institutions responsible for drafting key legislative and non-legislative proposals that will potentially reform European financial reporting standards. This paper aims to contribute to the current debate...

BRUSSELS - In an open letter addressed to the European Union (EU) president, the EU presidency and the European commission, 50 MEPs from 4 different political parties (S&D, Greens, Gue/Nordic Left and ALDE) call for “a moratorium on EU public financing for mining projects until adequate standards and regulations are in place.”