Financial Transparency Coalition

The Tax Justice Network, a coordinating member of the FTC, just released the latest edition of their newsletter, Tax Justice Focus. This edition focuses on the theme of tax justice and human rights, perhaps the fastest-growing area of interest in the rapidly expanding global tax justice community. Click here for the full edition of Tax Justice Focus, the Human Rights edition. You can also access the individual articles below.

The Financial Transparency Coalition issues play an important role in the context of global income inequality. By discouraging tax evasion and corruption among the world’s wealthy individuals and corporations, the FTC recommendations could play an important role in alleviating egregious and dangerous income disparity. When we talk about global inequality, we are usually referring to one of two issues: (1) inequality between nations and regions and (2) inequality between individuals. Inequality between nations usually refers to the huge disparities between the average incomes of people in different countries. The other kind of inequality, that between individuals, refers to the overwhelming...

Brad Plumer had a great article in The Washington Post today on the consequences of economic inequality in the United States. As inequality increases, all sorts of crazy things might happen: politicians may ease credit regulations, allowing middle class citizens (who are less wealthy due to inequality) to borrow from the future in order to keep up short term consumption, leading to bad long term consequences like increased bankruptcy, divorce, housing bubbles, etc.

Save the Children's Head of Research Alex Cobham has launched a blog that examines issues of inequality. Named "Uncounted," the blog has listed topics such as the life expectancy of indigenous peoples, caste and tribal poverty, and female illiteracy as those that reflect society's marginalization of individuals. At the same time, Cobham applies his inequality motif to tax issues, yet he notes a distinction between being "uncounted" by a lack of power and being "uncounted" by design. The latter "reflects the presence, not the absence of power."