Financial Transparency Coalition

If people stash their wealth or earn income overseas, that is fine with us — just as long as their tax authorities get the information they need to tax that wealth or income according to the law, and as long as money laundering and financial crimes can be effectively tracked, and so on. Where there are cross-border barriers to the instruments of democratic societies, then there is an offshore problem. The only credible way to provide the necessary information is through so-called automatic information exchange (AIE), where governments make sure the necessary information is available across borders, as a matter of routine. For years we at the Tax Justice...

President Obama wants to stop the billions of dollars that are moving offshore from U.S. companies.

Or he at least said so much during his State of the Union address last night:

As Americans, we don't mind paying our fair share of taxes, as long as everybody else does, too. But for far too long, lobbyists have rigged the tax code with loopholes that let some corporations pay nothing while others pay full freight. This year, we have an opportunity to change that. Let's close loopholes so we stop rewarding companies that keep profits abroad, and reward those that...

Last week, while showcasing draft EU laws on tax transparency, commissioner Algirdas Semeta told media in Brussels he is building "the most comprehensive information exchange system in the world." He added: "The EU system will become even broader than the US system." It is an astonishing claim. The wide-reaching impact of the new US regime - the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which came into force on 1 January - has been demonstrated by a storm of angry reactions in worldwide financial centres. Some of Semeta's proposals, notably his amendments to the EU Savings Tax Directive (EUSTD), do broaden the...

It was a busy Tuesday night for the tax justice campaign team. Many of us here at ActionAid were hearing from the fantastic campaigners that we had speaking at our event (more on that later). And a few more were glued to the Finance Bill debate in Parliament.