Financial Transparency Coalition

The High Level Plenary meeting on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will gather in the UN headquarters in New York from 20 to 22 September with a view to assess and accelerate progress towards the achievement of the MDGs. Prospects for such progress look gloomy since all MDGs are currently off-track. Heads of State and Government will need to move a step forwards and adopt ambitious commitments in order to meet the 2015 deadline. However, according to sources involved in the negotiation of the summit’s final outcome, this agreement is more likely to be a new compilation of abstract...

Christian Aid is launching a new phase of its Trace the Tax campaign for greater financial transparency by multinational companies. The charity is asking supporters to help persuade four firms to back its call for accounting reforms which will help poor countries collect more of the tax billions which are rightfully theirs. All four have assets and subsidiaries in developing countries. They are: Vodafone, Unilever, TUI Travel (which owns Thomson and First Choice) and Intercontinental Hotels Group (which owns Holiday Inn). Helen Collinson, Campaigns Manager at Christian Aid said: ‘We are appealing to these companies to support our campaign for greater tax...

The Swiss government has announced that it has examined the dossiers of over four thousand UBS clients suspected of committing tax evasion offences in the United States, but they have only transmitted their findings to the US authorities for around half of the examined cases. Under the terms of the administrative agreement agreed between Switzerland and the US in August 2009, criteria were established for proceeding with an administrative assistance request submitted by the Inland Revenue Service. This included a requirement that the Swiss Federal Tax Authority examines 4,450 UBS...

The FT reports:

The US Treasury is close to issuing rules to force banks worldwide to hand over up to 5m Americans’ account details in an assault on tax evasion that financial institutions say is unworkable. Tens of thousands of banks, fund managers, insurers and hedge funds face having to give the names of US clients with at least $50,000 of assets to the Internal Revenue Service under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, passed in March.

Institutions are stepping up lobbying ahead of guidance from the US Treasury on implementation of the law....