Financial Transparency Coalition

Last month the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris removed the last holdouts Andorra, Lichtenstein and Monaco from its blacklist of "uncooperative" tax havens. With every OECD-targeted tax haven across the globe now committed to tax "transparency and exchange of information," according to the organization's Committee on Fiscal Affairs, the world seems to have entered a new era.

The last G20 meeting declared that the era of banking secrecy is over. At a conference in Berlin, Ministers of Finance from the U.K., Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg agreed that countries failing to observe OECD regulations would face the possibility of sanctions. In the United States, President Obama has promised to “level the playing field” by curbing tax havens and cracking down on the abuse of tax havens by individuals. Yet this morning, the New York Times published a story claiming that the Department of Justice may drop a case against Swiss bank...

The Justice Department may drop a closely watched legal case aimed at forcing the Swiss bank UBS to divulge the names of 52,000 wealthy American clients suspected of offshore tax evasion, a United States official briefed on the matter said Monday. The move, which would halt an unusually aggressive effort to force Switzerland to lift its veil of banking secrecy, could happen by mid-July.

This past week, Task Force members Global Financial Integrity, Global Witness, and Tax Justice Network USA along with the Center for Corporate Policy, Citizens for Tax Justice, Friends Fiduciary Corporation, Government Accountability Project, MaryKnoll, New Rules for Global Finance, Oxfam America, and Public Citizen submitted a letter to the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC) in support of the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act (S. 569). The letter states that the legislation:

...will help law enforcement stop the misuse of U.S. corporations for tax fraud, money...