Financial Transparency Coalition

Transfer pricing, specifically the abuse-thereof, has found itself in the spotlight recently. This highly technical accounting procedure, which multinational corporations use to shift assets between subsidiaries, went years without much media or congressional attention. That all seems to have changed. (Of course, not all transfer pricing is abusive, but I'm not going to try to explain the intricacies of transfer pricing in this post—my colleague Collin Swan did a pretty good job of that here last week.) Abusive transfer pricing is a serious problem which began to seriously attract media attention after Jesse...

Towards the end of last month, Ann Hollingshead blogged about Businesses and Investors against Tax Haven Abuse, a coalition of over 400 small business owners and investors looking to curb the use of tax havens and shell companies by their larger multinational competitors. But how exactly do these multinational entities use tax havens? One method, which takes advantage of the disparity in tax rates between jurisdictions, is transfer pricing. Transfer pricing is an issue that has been described as incredibly lucrative to those involved and...

Conclusions of the OECD Meeting of the Council at Ministerial Level, 27-28 May 2010

In January 2010 the German government, in association with the European Commission and the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, organised a meeting of its International Tax Compact to consider the relationship between tax and development. Abusive tax practices featured high on the agenda. Details of the meeting, including the final communiqué and the papers submitted by participants, who included Jo Marie Griesgraber from our partners, New Rules for Global Finance, and our Director, John Christensen, are available here.