Financial Transparency Coalition

The Tax Justice Network an FTC member, just released the July installment of TaxCast, a podcast featuring a detailed look at the previous month's tax news. In the Tax Justice Network’s latest podcast: What really happened at the Google shareholder meeting vote on a proposal for ethical tax principles? Plus: we discuss what the new tax haven-friendly EU Commission President might do (or not do), anti-democratic moves in Hong Kong from the big four accountancy firms, and: forget the OECD’s global tax reform – developing countries can and are doing it...

Illicit financial flows affect countries all over the world. Unfortunately, developing countries seem to suffer the greatest due to illicit outflows. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, loses roughly 5.7% of its overall Gross Domestic Product every year to illicit flows, according to research from FTC member Global Financial Integrity. Along with advocating for strong policy changes, it’s important that a robust and informed press investigates cases of tax evasion, corruption, and harmful tax practices that rob governments of much needed revenue.

For a while now, we've been writing about the ongoing effort by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to create new standards for the exchange of tax and financial information between countries. The new system would help clamp down on corrupt individuals that hide their money in countries with strict secrecy laws and low tax rates. While there are many questions still remaining about implementation, one thing is clear: developing countries must be included. Some of the largest cases of illicit financial flows involve money being siphoned...

The IMF has a major new Policy Paper out entitled Spillovers in International Taxation, looking at the effects that one country’s tax rules and practices can have on others. Of course the IMF would never be so rude to some of its most powerful member states as to explicitly say what is in our headline – but that’s what we read between the lines. “Spillovers” in international tax are all about tax haven activity, particularly when those spillovers are deliberately crafted. Now that we’ve read it, we conclude that this is a really important document. It tears...