October 21st, 2014
Starting tomorrow a group of government officials and experts belonging to the world’s leading anti-money laundering organisation – the
Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – will be meeting in Paris. On the
agenda is the adoption of a document on an issue that has major implications for the fight against crime, corruption and tax evasion around the world.
It’s a shame nobody outside of this small circle of
experts from governments and international organisations has had a chance to see the document before it comes out.
According to the FATF
website, at its upcoming plenary meeting the organisation will adopt...
September 30th, 2014
California spends about $8,500 per year to educate its public school students. That’s about $3,300 less than the national average. In fact, according to
Education Week in a national ranking of states and D.C., California ranks near the bottom, at 49
th, in terms of per-pupil spending. There are reasons to believe that one cause of this problem is the system of property taxation in California—and its loopholes.
The biggest player in property taxation and its policy in California is Proposition 13. Approved by California’s voters in 1978, Proposition 13 sets
limits on the annual increases of assessed value...August 8th, 2014
The U.S. Treasury is in the process of taking a big step toward making it harder for corrupt politicians, drug traffickers and terrorists to make use of the U.S. financial system, by forcing banks to know who their customers actually are.
This is something we have been
advocating for five years. Treasury recently released a proposed
rule and is seeking comment until October 3, 2014. There’s info on how to do that
here.
It’s worth explaining precisely what we think the problem is, and what the rule should look like if it is...
July 16th, 2014
Last week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)
announced that it had received troves of data on a number of wealthy UK individuals that held money in an offshore bank in the Channel Isles, a British crown dependency and well known tax haven.
The ICIJ, along with
The Guardian newspaper, dissected the documents, and
released a
number of
stories outlining some of their findings. One of the more interesting tax arrangements uncovered seems to be that of the owners of
Nando's, the worldwide restaurant chain famous for its chicken dishes.
