Financial Transparency Coalition

The Financial Times is running an editorial today entitled a taxing world which is mostly very good. First, though, after a brief exploration of the UK Uncut phenomenon ("the group has a point") there is something we’d disagree with. The FT says this:

Tax avoidance is legal and legitimate. Unlike tax evasion, it is not obviously immoral to exploit the tax code to pay the least that is legally required.

It is up to government to plug the leaks, the FT said. No. For starters, as we constantly argue, what is legal is not necessarily what...

The private sector plays an important role in sustainable democratic and economic development. By creating jobs and opportunities, providing necessary goods and services, and thus improving people’s living standards, private enterprise in a market economy offers citizens the ability to prosper independently of state-provided goods and services. That, in turn, gives citizens the necessary leverage to hold their government accountable because public officials rely on citizens for support, not the other way around. An accountable and efficient public sector is still a necessary part of development, though, and governments and private businesses...

It’s been argued – even to their shame by Labour politicians – that it’s inappropriate to target individual companies when protesting about tax avoidance. That’s wrong, for three reasons. First, the decision to tax avoid or not is that of the individual company. No one asks them to. Despite the claims made by some company directors and some apologists for this abuse, company directors are under no obligation to minimise their tax bills. Indeed, if doing so increases the risk within their companies it’s quite easy to argue that they’re acting against...

This report "A confused economy", highlights the distortions between the real economy and the indicators that guide the G20 and the International Financial Institutions. Investments, trade, savings, production- the report shows how the use of offshore financial centres makes any measurement of these indicators impossible. At the heart of this economic lie, the report points to the important role of multinationals and banks- the top users of tax havens.