Tax havens cost governments $200 billion a year. It’s time to change the way global tax works

This article is brought to you thanks to the collaboration of The European Sting with the World Economic Forum. Author: Ludvig Wier, Postdoctoral researcher, UC Berkeley New research suggests 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens and that 10% of the world’s largest multinational firms are responsible for 98% of this activity; The result is $200 […]

A neo-liberal toll free Paradise for the super rich and tax hell for wage earners

Despite the hullaballoo in main stream media about Queen Elizabeth’s investments in tax-havens and the implication of the US Trade Secretary Wilbur Ross in a Russia related offshore firm, the shocking revelation in the Paradise Papers is that London appears as the largest money washing machine of the world. The biggest single disclosure is that […]

What are the real targets of EU’s efforts to fight tax evasion?

Algirdas Šemeta, the European Commissioner responsible for Taxation Audit and Anti-fraud announced yesterday in very low tones the creation of a new consultative committee in Brussels, under the name of “tax good governance platform”. This was a very disproportionate outcome, after the widely advertised Commission’s initiative to crack down on tax evasion in the European […]

EU fight against tax-evasion and money laundering blocked by Britain

The informal Ecofin and Eurogroup councils that took place in the Dublin Castle this weekend had only one victim; the bank depositors. Tax evaders got away, with Algirdas Šemeta the EU Commissioner responsible for Taxation and Anti-Fraud, running after them brandishing only his “appetite for progress and action”.  In reality no real progress or action […]

EU ready to relinquish its internal tax havens

The upcoming Ecofin and Eurogroup meetings in Dublin on 12 and 13 April may be informal but they are expected to introduce a ground breaking policy initiative. The new idea is that the 27 European Union countries should mutually abolish their banking secrecy rules and practices vis-à-vis the tax authorities of all member states. In […]