Financial Transparency Coalition

I hope people have noted I’m not a great fan of Tax Information Exchange Agreements. The basic reason is that they are virtually impossible to use. As the standard TIEA makes clear, a TIEA request must provide or state: (a) the identity of the person under examination or investigation; (b) what information is sought; (c) the tax purpose for which it is sought; (d) the grounds for believing that the information requested is held within the jurisdiction of which request is made; (e) to the extent known, the name and address of any person believed to be in possession of the requested information. The reason...

The Isle of Man plans to change its tax laws to clampdown further on tax evasion by savers resident in European Union member states.

As Richard Murphy has noted on his blog, the Treasury Minister of the Isle of Man, Allan Bell, has signaled that the small British territory will move adopt a standard of Automatic Exchange of Tax Information. According to the Isle of Man Today:

At a Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Forum in Paris, Mr Bell will announce that the withholding tax for EU-residents with offshore bank accounts here will be scrapped from July 1, 2011 – and the automatic exchange of tax information introduced.

This is a great step for the...

Reporting from Seattle -- Two principals of defunct Seattle investment management firm Quellos Group and a Los Angeles lawyer were indicted in a tax shelter scheme that allegedly created more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent losses for prominent clients, including media mogul and billionaire investor Haim Saban.