Financial Transparency Coalition

With the €1 Trillion the EU governments lose each year to tax dodging at stake. The prospect of a debt ridden jobless future has EU the asking questions. DG TAXUD the tax arm of the EU civil service will prepare a communication by December on the broad topic of tax havens and unfair tax competition.

In a judgment having far reaching consequence, a three judges bench of the Supreme Court of India, in the case of Vodafone International Holdings BV v. Union of India, has set aside the Mumbai High Court judgment, which had required Vodafone to pay capital gains tax worth US$2.5 billion to the Government of India for a transaction that had seen the company acquire 67 per cent stake in Hutchison Essar (a mobile phone operator in India) in 2007. Vodafone, the second largest telecom operator in India, had challenged the tax bill over its US$11.5 billion deal to buy Hutchison...

Using consistently credible sources the resulting estimate of tax evasion in the European Union is approximately €860 billion a year. As the report notes, estimating tax avoidance, which is the other key component of the tax gap in Europe, is harder. However, an estimate that it might be €150 billion a year is made in this report. In combination it is therefore likely that tax evasion and tax avoidance might cost the governments of the European Union member states €1 trillion a year. These losses can only be accurately located with regard to tax evasion. Italy loses the most...

I heard a lot of things I liked during President Obama’s State of the Union address this evening. I also heard a couple of things I didn’t like. I’ll get to those. I want to talk specifically about his statements on corporate taxation. I’ll have to leave his statements on individual taxes to someone else. From the transcript of tonight’s State of the Union: Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas. Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and...