Financial Transparency Coalition

WASHINGTON – The world’s most powerful countries may be about to renege on their pledges to help developing nations fight massive tax dodging by multinationals, Christian Aid is warning.

As The Guardian reports this morning:

More than a third of the subsidiaries owned by major energy and mining companies including Shell, BP and Glencore are based in “secrecy jurisdictions” where company accounts are not publicly available, according to a report. The study by Publish What You Pay Norway, which campaigns for transparent accounting among oil, gas and mining giants, claims that populations in resource-rich countries are losing out because they are unable to extract financial information from businesses operating on their soil or off their seaboards. “Extractive industry giants’ corporate ownership structures, their use of secrecy jurisdictions and the...

Whether it’s tackling corporate tax dodging, changing international rules on tax havens, or improving tax systems, everyone involved in the international tax justice movement is aiming to increase the tax take in developing countries. This is both to increase the money available to pay for nurses, teachers and roads, desperately needed when you’re trying to run, say, a health service on a few dollars per person per year - as is the case in many of the poorest countries. It is also to encourage and develop the social contract between state and citizen, improving accountability. And it is to afford...

In Germany, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) has come out against the deal. Meanwhile, the European Commission has also said it will have to assess the legality of the deals but has not taken a firm position. The final withholding tax concept, known as ‘Rubik,’ was initially formulated by the Association of Foreign Banks in Switzerland (AFBS) and by Swiss banks to protect banking secrecy against the international moves towards automatic tax information exchange, which followed the global financial crisis.

SPD Plans to Block Rubik Ratification in Germany

The SPD’s financial concept note published last Monday rejects the agreement with Switzerland. It is...