Development Finance & Tax Justice - Archive

New Discussion paper for the Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development Perspectives I March 2015

The Post-2015 Agenda with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as one of its key components is intended to be truly universal and global. This requires a fair sharing of costs, responsibilities and opportunities among and within countries. The principle of »common but differentiated responsibilities« (CBDR) must be applied. Coupled with the human rights principle of equal rights for all and the need to respect [...]

Several European NGOs are urging Jean-Claude Juncker, President oft he European Commission, to step up the ambition level for a comprehensive tax reform package for the EU. Several scandals have recently shaken the continent and shown that EU members are damaging themselves and one another with unfair and divisive tax policies. Furthermore, EU policies and positions are making it difficult for countries in the Global South to raise urgently needed resources to fund the realization of human rights. To this [...]

On January 28-30, 2015, members of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) attended the First Drafting Session for the outcome document of the third International Conference on Financing forDevelopment (FfD3) at the United Nations Headquarters. As a result, a policy paper by Nicole Bidegain reviews the main elements of the FfD process in order to set current debates in context, identify conflict areas between the different blocks of countries, and introduce some of the recommendations DAWN has [...]

A new report "Unhappy Meal: €1 Billion in Tax Avoidance on the Menu at McDonald's" by EFFAT, EPSU, SEIU and War on Want outlines in detail what the authors call tax avoidance strategies adopted by McDonald’s and their tax impact both throughout Europe and in major markets like France, Italy, Spain and the U.K. The practice, the coalition says, essentially consisted of moving the European headquarters from the UK to Switzerland as well as using intra-group royalty payments and channeling [...]

Despite snowstorm warnings and ice-cold temperatures in New York, the Financing for Development (FfD) negotiations managed to pick up speed when governments convened for the first drafting session at the end of January. They are currently negotiating the outcome of the upcoming Addis Ababa Conference on Financing for Development, which will take place on July 13-16 this year, and is planned as a key milestone ahead of the Post-2015 Summit and the UNFCCC Climate Conference later this year. Tove Maria [...]

"In 2014, we saw yet another repeat of the claim that ‘banking secrecy is over’, as some countries began to commit to a new agreement to share information on money held offshore. But the picture is not consistent: with only 52 countries currently signed up to implementation, and very few of them developing countries, it seems that banking secrecy may be over for some, but not for others. In 2013 we identified the challenges involved in creating a system of [...]

The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) reports about Spain’s failure to protect economic and social rights in times of economic crisis, which has come under stern criticism from other states at the country’s recent Universal Periodic Review (UPR) by the UN Human Rights Council. One after another, Spain’s peers in the community of nations voiced their concern over the erosion of economic and social rights after four years of ill-conceived austerity measures. The gravity of the deprivations evidenced [...]

A very broad international group of Civil Society Organizations has published a critical response to a paper outlining elements of a Financing for Development (FfD) Agenda by the co-chairs of the preparatory process of the upcoming 3rd FfD Conference in Addis Ababa in July 2015. Overall, the CSOs say, the document provides a good starting point for the first drafting sessions and includes most (but not all) of the policy proposals necessary to ensure a successful outcome of the Addis [...]

You are cordially invited to a side-event by the Permanent Mission of Brazil to the UN, CIDSE and Social Watch on Thursday, January 29, 2015 in the UN Conference Building, New York. Dealing with responsibilities in a financing sustainable development context, this event seeks to generate discussion on conceptual challenges such as an evenhanded approach to the three pillars of sustainable development, adapting a framework like the Financing for Development process to the universal agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals [...]

The economic valuation of nature has now been debated for several years, having already been implicit in the Kyoto Protocol that set targets for greenhouse gas emissions and provided the framework for trading CO2 equivalents. The role of nature in models to measure prosperity and of market-based instruments in nature conservation was discussed at a conference organised by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Global Policy Forum and terre des hommes in Bonn, Germany, in November. Presentations and discussions at the conference [...]

Washington based think tank Global Financial Integrity has launched its latest edition of “Illicit Financial Flows from the Developing World: 2003-2012.” The study finds that developing and emerging economies lost US$6.6 trillion in illicit financial flows from 2003 through 2012, with illicit outflows increasing at an staggering average rate of 9.4 percent per year—roughly twice as fast as global GDP. This study is GFI’s 2014 annual global update on illicit financial flows from developing economies, and it is the fifth [...]

A group of civil society activists, coming together in Lima for a conference of the Financial Transparency Coalition and Latindadd on “Hidden Money, Hidden Resources: Financing Development with Transparency” from 14 – 15 October 2014, has prepared a statement on the links of illicit capital flows, tax policies and gender justice. The statement argues that "tax regimes are not gender neutral. Women and men experience the impact of tax policies as part of the workforce, as consumers, producers and as [...]

The Arab NGO Network for Development, in collaboration with Christian Aid and Social and Economics Policy Monitor Palestine, explore in their comparative study on “Tax Systems in Six Arab Countries” how the tax systems of Arab countries have contributed to the lack of opportunity, growing inequalities, marginalization and exclusion suffered by the majority of people living in the Arab region. The revolutions witnessed by some countries in the region and the instability and crises in others are in part a [...]

Eurodad, together with partners from all over Europe (including GPF) has released a new report “Hidden Profits”. Coming right in time to complement the Luxembourg Leaks investigations, the report compares 15 EU countries’ performance on combating tax dodging and ensuring financial transparency and finds they are still failing to address urgent problems, which cost both developed and developing countries billions of euros in lost tax revenue every year. Each country is also directly compared with its fellow EU member states [...]

2015 will be a landmark year for the global fight against poverty and for equitable and sustainable development, with three crucial summits in just six months. A central issue for all three summits is concrete proposals for reforms to international financial and trade systems so that they support the achievement of global sustainable development goals. Such reforms should be based on the right to development for all countries and ensuring economic and social rights for all. There are sufficient funds [...]

On September 19 2014, Global Policy Forum, in collaboration with MISEREOR, hosted an expert panel discussion that raised many strategic questions on the topic of financing the post-2015 sustainable development agenda and the sustainable development goals. Many of the answers to these questions depend on the outcomes of negotiations in the run up to the UN Financing for Development Conference in July and the expected UN Summit to pass a post-2015 agenda in September 2015. In the meantime, however, the [...]

Based on a review of 28,000 pages of leaked documents the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a team of more than 80 journalists from 26 countries say, international companies such as IKEA, FedEx, Pepsi and Procter & Gamble have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars through Luxembourg and slashed billions from their global tax bills. The leaked documents come from Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Luxembourg and include hundreds of private tax rulings – so-called “comfort letters” – that Luxembourg provides [...]

Developing countries lose billions of dollars every year through tax avoidance and evasion. Tax havens play a pivotal role in this by providing low or no taxation and by promising secrecy, allowing businesses to dodge taxes and remain largely unaccountable for their actions. Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) are government-controlled institutions that, as this report shows, often support private sector projects that are routed through tax havens, using scarce public money. By supporting projects in this way, DFIs are helping to [...]

The World Bank’s Doing Business Report has been criticized by a global coalition of Civil Society Organizations to contain major methodological flaws. Such shortcomings threaten to undermine not only the report’s credibility but also the World Bank’s effectiveness in achieving its goals. Experts argue that a comprehensive overhaul of the existing indicators in the report will be necessary if it is still to serve as a useful instrument to assess the contribution of business to global development. Moreover, there is [...]

After six weeks in office, the new U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein of Jordan launched a blistering attack on member states for insufficient funding, thereby forcing operations in his office to the breaking point “in a world that seems to be lurching from crisis to ever-more dangerous crisis," writes Thalif Deen in a recent piece for IPS. “I have been asked to use a boat and a bucket to cope with a flood,” he said [...]

"The debates on the Post 2015 Agenda offer the opportunity to reconsider development in light of the new realities and to overcome the old and often still paternalistic approaches of development policy. Therefore, a truly universal Post 2015 Agenda must not just become an updated set of MDGs. It should contain universal sustainability goals and a program for structural transformation which defines the necessary financial, regulatory and institutional means of implementation in all countries of the world, and this in [...]

The long struggle of governments to combat tax evasion and avoidance by multinational enterprises continues unabated. However, if the most recent developments in negotiations around the OECD’s anti-BEPS project and discussions concerning the upcoming G20 summit in Australia in November are any indication, it does not look as if any significant progress will be made to turn the tide of tax abuse – at least not in the near future. Indeed, more entrenched problems, such as tax competition among countries [...]

"The primary role of the Investment Division of UNCTAD should be to provide to developing countries alternatives to the unbalanced provisions of international investment treaties" say 262 organizations from over 150 countries in a letter to Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, secretary general of the UN body specializing in trade and development. The signatories worry about "the growing restrictions on policy space resulting from the investment protection rules" that threaten to impede the development of countries in the Global South. It is [...]

Owners of anonymous companies registered in U.S. states are ripping off innocent people and businesses across America, says a new report by Global Witness. Drawing on 22 cases involving anonymous companies from 27 states, The Great Rip Off shows how fraudsters, mobsters, money-launderers, tax-evaders and corrupt politicians are able to use anonymously-owned American companies to cover their tracks and evade the authorities.

The obligation of progressive realization has long been central to understanding how economic, social, and cultural (ESC) rights recognized in the present International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) should be achieved. Indeed, at the time the ICESCR was adopted, it was considered appropriate to underscore that the right to health, education and social security, among other rights, could not be fully and immediately realized everywhere in the world. In her blog, Helena Hofbauer from the International Budget [...]