Financial Transparency Coalition

The Monetary Affairs Committee of the EU Parliament has sent the following letter to the European Commission:

Mr Michel Barnier Commissioner for Internal Market and Services European Commission Rue de la Loi 200 B-1049 Brussels 25 May 2011 Country by Country Reporting Dear Commissioner Barnier We wanted to thank you for taking the time to meet with some of us last week in Strasbourg and for your continued positive engagement on country-by-country reporting and your public commitment to come forward with legislative proposals later this year . Before those proposals are published, we would like to reiterate a few key points from our meeting which we hope...

A report from Spanish observatory on foreign affairs from the Fundación alternativas, reveals that measures adopted by the G20 to fight against tax havens and tax evasion have not been implemented yet. The report entitled “The fight against tax havens and tax evasion: Progress since the London G20 summit and the challenges ahead” proposes ways to implement measures that have already been adopted. The financial crisis in 2008 highlighted the harmful effect of tax havens on the economy of developed and developing countries. It was a key issue at the G20 London Summit in April 2009, where leaders...

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...

An article the other week in the Ugandan Daily Monitor quotes an official from the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), Mr. Patrick Mukiibi, on the value and implications of illicit flows from that country. According to the article, Uganda loses UGX 2 trillion (approx. USD 866 million) annually through “tax crime”, also termed “economic and tax fraud”. The Ugandan Ministry of Finance says that the current fiscal year (2010/2011) government budget is UGX 7.5 trillion (approx. USD 3.2 billion), and it will need loans and other development assistance to cover 26 percent of this. In other words, the article...