Financial Transparency Coalition

Bill Gates likes to be thought of as a great philanthropist. He’s referred to as such, so I guess he’s happy about it. And in some senses he is. But remember he gets tax relief as a result. Remember something else too: the value of Microsoft has undoubtedly been inflated by its tax planning. Low taxes equals higher value is a golden rule of the stock market: it’s the motive for tax avoidance. So ask a question: how much of Gates’ philanthropy has been paid for by the US Exchequer? Quite a lot, I suspect. It’s still philanthropy, but not quite as it first...

In a piece titled Dirty Money: Why does the international banking system make it so easy for corruption to flourish?, the People & Power series on Al Jazeera reports on kleptocrats, grand scale corruption, and the ease of channelling dirty money through the secrecy mechanisms of the global financial system, Again, let's drive the point home here, we're talking secrecy - we are not disputing rights to due privacy - we are talking the kind of secrecy that allows criminals and tax cheats to profit with impunity, and to lead privileged...

WASHINGTON, DC – As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) convenes its third meeting of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes in Bermuda today, addressing deficiencies in the current OECD standard of tax information exchange is crucial, said Global Financial Integrity (GFI).

The Sunday Times did an expose of Google’s tax affairs Sunday. I’ll declare an interest: they asked me to help the investigation, and I did. The findings? Google has avoided £3 billion of tax worldwide over the last five years. It’s tax rate outside the USA is just 3%. In 2009, if Google had declared profits in proportion to sales in the UK in the ratio that the worldwide accounts showed (about 35% profit pre tax) then the expected UK tax bill would have been about £190 million.