Financial Transparency Coalition

I heard a lot of things I liked during President Obama’s State of the Union address this evening. I also heard a couple of things I didn’t like. I’ll get to those. I want to talk specifically about his statements on corporate taxation. I’ll have to leave his statements on individual taxes to someone else. From the transcript of tonight’s State of the Union: Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas. Meanwhile, companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and...

New Delhi: Paris-based think-tank OECD has mooted the idea of sending experts to developing countries, including India, to help in issues such as transfer pricing besides various bilateral taxation-related matters.

PARIS (OECD) – Due to the recent financial and economic crisis, global corporate losses have increased significantly. Numbers at stake are vast, with loss carry-forwards as high as 25% of GDP in some countries. Though most of these claims are justified, some corporations find loop-holes and use ‘aggressive tax planning’ to avoid taxes in ways that are not within the spirit of the law.

The European Commission has just published a new study, entitled Transfer Pricing and Developing Countries, which looks particularly at the application of rules with respect to Ghana, Honduras, Kenya and Vietnam. We have not yet parsed this report in any detail - but we will. From the outset we are discouraged by two things in particular. The first appears on the very first page (and in the top right of every subsequent page), and the accompanying picture shows it: That should be a red flag, straight away. There is a battle growing in the field of transfer pricing, especially with respect to...