Financial Transparency Coalition

LONDON / WASHINGTON – U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of Minnesota is an educated man. He earned his law degree from Harvard, won a coveted clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and taught the law for more than a decade before joining the bench in 2006.But when Wells Fargo, the retail banking giant, and the U.S. Justice Department squared off in his courtroom last year over the legality of a fiendishly complicated tax scheme known as “STARS,’’ even Schiltz quickly realized he was not equipped to parse the facts.“I fear I may finally have met my match,”...

Ten years ago today, the New York Times reported the words of U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill who, in testimony:

"dismissed as meaningless a document, based on government data, presented by the senator, Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, indicating that fewer than 6,000 of more than 1.1 million offshore accounts and businesses were properly disclosed and therefore legal. Pressed by Senator Levin about whether the disparity between reported offshore accounts and their actual numbers was significant, Mr. O'Neill replied: ''I find it amusing.''

The scale of it was startling, even then:

"His testimony, to the...

WASHINGTON – The Internal Revenue Service is giving more time to Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), Aegon NV (AGN) and other banks based outside of the U.S. to implement a controversial tax reporting rule.

The Tax Justice Network has now collected a significant number of documents together in its "Offshore History" page. The latest addition is a history of the emergence of the Cayman Islands as a tax haven / secrecy jurisdiction, which is here. The full Offshore History page currently reads as below. Comments and suggestions for additional material would be gratefully received. Offshore History: Articles and online documents Dec 2010 - Tax Analysts 40th anniversary commemorative book, where 50 tax folk are invited to answer the question: What is one of the most significant changes to tax administration, practice, or...