Financial Transparency Coalition

In the past year, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and British Prime Minister David Cameron have been fairly vocal about Pakistan not taxing its elites, while the US and UK give aid to the country. Of course, in a fragile state like Pakistan, statements by the UK and US governments on tax are no doubt motivated by the potential for tax reform to build a strong and responsive state – which is less likely to be a security concern internationally. But Finance Minister, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, has joined the call for the rich, legislators and media ‘moguls’ to...

David Spencer, a Senior Advisor to the Tax Justice Network, has just delivered a hard-hitting speech at a major United Nations meeting on transfer pricing, an arcane-sounding but extraordinarily important issue in the field of international tax. Spencer's speech is here. It is an outspoken document, couched in diplomatic language, which contains too much important stuff for us to summarise in detail on this blog - so here is a short summary. Read the whole document for the full effect. Companies can manipulate their internal trade ("transfer") prices...

People only form companies for economic reasons. There really is no other reason to have one. Despite that just one in three companies in the UK pay tax. The data is based on the year to March 2010. All the details on how I got the data is in a report here. The facts are:

a)     There were about 2.6 million companies on the Register throughout most of that year.

b)     Of these about 500,000 claimed to be dormant.

c)     That leaves 2.1 million potentially taxable.

d)     But I guessed at least 180,000 of the...

‘We don’t care how much tax we pay, as long as you tell us how much it is, let us pay it and leave us alone’ Perhaps not what you might expect to hear from the head of tax from a major global bank. But as the most influential tax professionals from across America gathered in DC to discuss the latest developments in business taxation with the OECD, simplicity and certainty was the resounding call from business. The OECD is looking for its place in the world, and it’s pretty clear that this “rich countries’ club” is not as dominant as...