Financial Transparency Coalition

The U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) has issued a detailed new report looking at secrecy jurisdictions (also sometimes known as tax havens). The report, which references our work in several places, is packed with data and useful material. For example, looking at methods of corporate tax avoidance, it mentions:

• Allocation Allocation of Debt and Earnings Stripping (p8, "borrow more in the high-tax jurisdiction and less in the low-tax one." - note also our latest blog)
• Transfer pricing(p9, "By lowering the price of goods and services sold by parents and affiliates in high-tax jurisdictions and raising the price of...

There is often a symbiotic relationship between small secrecy jurisdictions (or tax havens, if you must) and wealthy élites in larger economies. Germany is surrounded by Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Austria; Portugal has Madeira; the United States has a string of options in the Caribbean; and Britain has cast a whole spider's web around the world, not least in the Channel Islands and the Caribbean. Monaco, of course, is France's special secrecy jurisdiction. A new story from Wealth Bulletin notes the France-Monaco relationship is a bit like the one between, say, Britain and the Cayman Islands.

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On the eve of Leader of Government Business McKeeva Bush’s appointment to sign Cayman’s 11th Tax Information Exchange Agreement, this time with the Netherlands, two OECD countries have indicated that the proverbial goal posts may have shifted once again when it comes to measuring cooperation on fighting global tax evasion. According to reports from a summit in Evian, France, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have called for a March 2010 deadline for sanctions against tax havens that fail to bring their transparency up to international standards.

The summit meeting which is taking place in L’Aquila, Italy, at which the Group of 8 (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States) is joined by South Africa, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Egypt, will be the first since we realized the extent of the financial and economic crisis we are facing.