Financial Transparency Coalition

David McNair of Christian Aid has an article under the first part of the above title in the Guardian today. David is right to draw attention to the toxic nature of a new deal between Germany and Switzerland – but the UK is also set to sign such a deal very soon. I wrote about this in May, saying the following, and nothing has changed since:

The FT reported today that the UK is to shortly sign a new tax deal with Switzerland. As it said:

Britons with billions of pounds hidden in Switzerland will pay tax...

By TJN staff and Mark Herkenrath, Alliance Sud We already blogged about the signing yesterday of the Swiss-German tax deal, and TJN's opposition to it. This blog goes into a little more detail than before, and outlines some of the salient points of the deal. This is something that matters a great deal - because several other countries are believed to be considering doing something similar. Which, in TJN's view, would be a grave mistake. (Our last blog also highlights the strange, even fishy-looking timing of this...

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...

The European presidency has just issued a note advocating a push to increase financial transparency in Europe through its Savings Tax Directive. As they say:

"The Presidency attaches crucial importance to gear up bilateral talks in order to reach political agreement upon the adoption of the Savings Tax Directive in the very near future."

Unsurprisingly, there are some rather large flies in this ointment. Austria and Luxembourg have long been holdouts on the European Savings Tax Directive, working hard behind...