Financial Transparency Coalition

The Isle of Man noted that the island may be used for egregious tax avoidance. It's good to see that KPMG admit that the Isle of Man is used for such schemes.

Two weeks ago, the twenty most powerful leaders of the world headed to Cannes, France for the G20 Summit. It was the G20’s sixth meeting in a series of ongoing discussions about the world’s financial markets. While the meeting did not reach any concrete policy decisions on a host of important issues plaguing our financial world, some of the accomplishments of the meeting included a few pointed and poignant statements from some of the world’s most powerful. One of these statements came from Indian Prime Minister Manomohan Singh, who urged the world’s twenty most powerful countries to agree to...

When I first looked at the subsidy the UK gave to the Isle of Man through its VAT sharing agreement I came to the conclusion that the sum involved exceeded £200 million a year. In 2009 the UK government removed £140 million of that subsidy a year. Yesterday they announced intention to increase the withdrawal if subsidy to a total of £215 million a year – very close to the sum I first calculated.

H M Revenue & Customs has, as many will be aware, announced a new penalty regime for offshore disclosures. As they say:

These new penalties come into force from 6 April 2011 and apply to Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax. The legislation can be found in Schedule 10 of Finance Act 2010. The new penalty is an enhancement of the penalties for