Financial Transparency Coalition

The Tax Justice Network an FTC member, just released the July installment of TaxCast, a podcast featuring a detailed look at the previous month's tax news. In the Tax Justice Network’s latest podcast: What really happened at the Google shareholder meeting vote on a proposal for ethical tax principles? Plus: we discuss what the new tax haven-friendly EU Commission President might do (or not do), anti-democratic moves in Hong Kong from the big four accountancy firms, and: forget the OECD’s global tax reform – developing countries can and are doing it...

Australia has long been an international leader on financial transparency issues, whether we're talking about taxes, beneficial ownership academic research, or money laundering laws. They aren't perfect, but it looks like the Australian Parliament will support an important new provision to make their tax system a whole lot more transparent:

In January 2013′s Taxcast: A significant ruling against Dell in Spain, India shelves rules that would have tackled corporate tax abuse until 2016, the EU threatens to blacklist Switzerland and Naomi takes a look at ‘Google Capitalism.’ (An extended edition to kick off 2013 – just under 20 mins).

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard Google’s informal and now iconic motto “Don’t be Evil.” Google describes this slogan as twofold. To the company, the motto is first about providing its “users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services.” Second, it is more generally about “doing the right thing,” including “following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect.” While some on this blog (and even Steve Jobs once) have accurately pointed out ways in which Google has failed to act by this code, in many other ways,...