Development Finance & Tax Justice - Archive

MPs of the European Parliament from the Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) Committees voted in favour of public registries which would provide information on the real, or ‘beneficial’, owners of companies. The long-awaited vote, which recommends significant improvements to the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD) and would make it much harder for criminals to launder their money using European companies.

Today the OECD presented its report on a new global standard for countries and tax havens to exchange information with each other, a new tool for fighting the scourge of tax evasion. The report contains many positive elements but falls far short of what the world’s citizens desperately need – especially citizens in poorer countries.

In this second of a two part series on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Discussion Note on 'Macroeconomic Gains From Gender Equity' feminist economists Prof. Stephanie Seguino with Associate Prof. Elissa Braunstein and Dr. Anit N. Mukherjee take a look at the some of the shortfalls in the report related to gender wage gap, how macroeconomic policies perpetuate gender inequality, female labour force participation rate and unpaid care work.

A new working paper by Global Policy Forum, MISEREOR and Brot für die Welt sheds light on how greater corporate transparency can help overcome the dependence by countries in the Global South on foreign donors and mobilize sufficient government revenue to provide an adequate level of public goods. Corporations have devised various ways of getting their money out of a country without paying tax. If transnational companies are to be more honest in their tax affairs, their payment flows must [...]

The International Budget Partnership (IBP) has launched a special issue of its newsletter that focuses on budgeting for environmental sustainability. In his contribution, Jens Martens, Director of the Global Policy Forum lines out the idea of 'Sustainable Development Budgets' and their key role as an integral part of the post-2015 agenda. Moreover articles include examples of what countries are doing to “green” their budgets in Philippines and Canada and what shall be done about environmentally harmful subsidies.

Close relatives of China’s top leaders have held secretive offshore companies in tax havens that helped shroud the Communist Party elite’s wealth, a leaked cache of documents reveals. The confidential files include details of a real estate company co-owned by current President Xi Jinping’s brother-in-law and British Virgin Islands companies set up by former Premier Wen Jiabao’s son and also by his son-in-law.

A new report by Eurodad's Stéphanie Colin deal with the issue of concessional loans in development finance. In the context of tighter budgets in OECD-DAC countries governments are looking for methods to increase official development assitance (ODA) levels without budgetary implications. One way of doing this is reporting a larger share of loans to developing countries as ODA. Other measures in this directions are ideas to leverage development resources by 'blending' public with private funds. The report discusses the main [...]

Crime, corruption, and tax evasion drained US$946.7 billion from the developing world in 2011, up more than 13.7 percent from 2010. These findings by Washington based Think Tank Global Financial Integrity, which peg cumulative illicit financial outflows from developing countries at US$5.9 trillion between 2002 and 2011 are part of a new study. "As the world economy sputters along in the wake of the global financial crisis, the illicit underworld is thriving – siphoning more and more money from developing [...]

European leaders should use their meeting this week to agree further action against tax dodging by multinationals, CSOs urge in a new report. The report: ‘Giving with one hand and taking with the other: Europe’s role in tax-related capital flight from developing countries 2013’ reveals the state of money laundering, tax avoidance and tax evasion, and the extent of government action against them, across 13 EU Countries.

GENEVA (2 December 2013) – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, today called for developing countries to be granted the freedom to use food reserves to help secure the right to food, without the threat of sanctions under current World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.

Mr. De Schutter’s call comes on the eve of a high-level WTO summit in Bali, Indonesia, (3-6 December) which will try to reach agreement on proposals on developing countries’ [...]

On November 21st the sixth meeting of the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes is opened in Jakarta. On this occasion, a broad coalition of organizations, including GPF, has issued a position paper on Automatic Information Exchange (AIE) for tax purposses. If a person or entity resident in one jurisdiction owns income-generating assets in another jurisdiction, the resident's tax authorities generally need to know about that asset or income, to assess their tax liabities [...]

by Mark Herkenrath

At the St. Petersburg G20 Summit, the leading industrialized and emerging countries again came out clearly for automatic tax information exchange. They want to see it implemented by the end of 2015 at the latest. The OECD was tasked with working out a framework agreement by next February and quickly completing work on the requisite technical infrastructure.

Moreover, the G20 Heads of State promised in their final declaration also to allow developing countries access to automatic information [...]

The tax structure and the level of revenue collection, budget allocations and expenditure influence the ability of governments to fulfill their human rights obligations and tackle discrimination and structural inequalities. The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, is preparing to submit a report concerning fiscal and tax policy, poverty and human rights. Governments have been asked to respond the questionnaire prepared by the Special Rapporteur in order to gather information on domestic fiscal and [...]

‘Blending’ is a mechanism that links a grant element, provided by official development assistance (ODA), with loans from publicly owned institutions or commercial lenders. This is not a new phenomenon. What is new is the narrative of the European Union (EU), which argues that using ODA to leverage private finance is the solution following the financial crisis. There has been an increase in development finance institutions (DFIs) and EU donors using blending mechanisms to increase support and lending to private [...]

TJN’s 2013 Financial Secrecy Index exposes yawning gap between G20 rhetoric and reality

Today the Tax Justice Network launches its 2013 Financial Secrecy Index, the biggest ever survey of global financial secrecy. This unique index combines a secrecy score with a weighting to create a ranking of the countries that most actively and aggressively promote secrecy in global finance.

This new edition of the Financial Secrecy Index shows that the United Kingdom is the most important global player in the [...]

The United Nations' Sixth High-Level Dialogue on Financing for Development (FfD) that took place in New York in early October shows a deep rift between developing and developed countries. This dialogue was mandated to look at the FfD Agenda's status of implementation and the tasks ahead. While the EU thinks it contributed at least its fair share, developing countries pointed to the major failures in implementation of aid, debt or trade commitments. The future of the FfD process remains unclear [...]

The Working Group on "Financing for sustainable development" of the socalled UN System Task Team (UNTT) has issued four background papers for the Intergovernmental Expert Committee on Sustainable Development Financing and its deliberations surrounding the post-2015 UN development agenda. Paper #1 reviews investment requirement estimates that have been published over the last decade for nine sectors; paper #2 takes stock of national, regional and international public sources for sustainable development finance; paper #3 examines the challenges in raising private sector [...]

Briones2011Prof. Leonor Magtolis-Briones from Social Watch Philippines gives three reasons why the Philippines 2014 national budget is prone to misuse. Social Watch Philippines analyses the government’s annual spending budgets and releases alternative budgets through its Alternative Budget Initiative to influence the national budgets to become more supportive in creating a sustainable environment and more equitable society for the Philippines. The following is an edited version of a piece originally entitled Speaking for Myself: The 2014 National Budget, Special Purpose Funds [...]

In a feature South-African organization L4BB deals with the subject of growing anger at corporate tax dodging. Adrienne Margolis poses the question: How can commercial lawyers respond to demands for tax justice? In order to improve revenue raising from multinationals operating in developing countries, L4BB demands a legal aprroach that sidesteps technical distinctions between legitimate tax planning, tax avoidance and tax evasion and focuses instead on a more widely defined notion of 'tax abuse'

ANND has issued a statement on World Bank loans in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. As almost 2 million Syrians have been displaced in neighbouring countries, the World Bank has started to issue loans, such as a $150 million loan to support Jordan. However as Jordan (and also Lebanon) are heavily indebted civil society groups are asking for grants to be issued in place of loans to allow the affected countries an opportunity to recover.

The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) is currently reviewing the rules to report donors’ loans as Official Development Assistance (ODA). This discussion is taking place against a backdrop of aid cuts across Europe and raises concerns about the intentions of DAC donors. There are risks that the poor will be short-changed if the new rules make it easier for donors to inflate their aid figures further without making fresh money available and that debt sustainability will be undermined if loans [...]

The Human Rights Institut of the International Bar Association (IBAHRI) launched a new report adressing tax abuse from the perspective of human rights law and policies. The report, compilated by an expert task force, offers new insights into the links between tax abuses, poverty and human rights. This report analyses the responsibilities and remedies to counter tax abuse and delivers specific recommendations for states, businesses and the legal profession.

At the level of the European Union a new anti-money laundering directive is currently under way. German NGO World Economy, Ecology and Developmet (WEED) has recently taken up the issue in a factsheet and focusses on the situation in Germany specifically. Contrary to popular perception, Germany is a popular destination for money laundering activities. Being a liquid market with high cash flow makes the country attractive while also complicating the monitoring of financial flows. Its central location between Eastern and [...]

"When the delegations arrive in Washington next week for the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, they will face a situation that the citizens of IMF programme countries know all too well: The public sector has shut down due to a debt crisis and the policy response that followed. Let’s see if this helps to make the governors of the international financial architecture’s most powerful institution learn some lessons and make the right decisions," writes [...]

Oxfam has recently published a report alarming the public of the consequences of the austerity measures used to equalize the EU economies after the debt crises. The mechanisms used, have increased the risk of poverty in Europe as people are increasingly burdened by the taxes being enforced on them. Oxfam has released four recommendations that governments must implement to create a fairer society.