Financial Transparency Coalition

On September 11th the European Parliament voted in favour of introducing a minimum tax rate on interests and royalty income. This is a crucial step in the fight against tax dodging by multinational companies. Royalties and interest payments made between subsidiaries of the same company are two of the main instruments used by multinational companies to evade taxes, at the moment this is far too easy.

Last night, the University of Edinburgh Students Union became the first union in the UK to ban all SABMiller beers, including Grolsch and Peroni, from union outlets.

Today we would like to highlight two recent blogs from two of Eurodad members, which discuss some positive developments in the tax transparency arena. Firstly, following Action Aid’s recent report on SABMiller and its abusive transfer pricing practices in developing countries, several tax authorities in Africa are conducting further investigations on the company’s operations. “African tax authorities have not only acknowledged the impact of ActionAid’s recent report highlighting tax avoidance by the global brewing company SABMiller, but also committed to doing something new in response to it. Meeting last week to discuss our report under the auspices of the African...

A recent report from ActionAid made headlines when it accused SABMiller, the world’s second largest beer company, of avoiding millions of pounds worth of tax in India and the African countries in which it operates. ActionAid argues that through financial transactions with subsidiaries located in tax havens, SABMiller shifts its profits largely via royalty and management fees to firms in developed countries with lower tax rates. As a result, lower local profits mean less taxable income, and that denies governments the revenue needed to build key infrastructures such as schools, roads, and ports. On the other hand, Zahid...