Friday, July 01, 2011

Links Jul 1

African Tax Group Stepping Up Efforts To Control Tax Avoidance Wall Street Journal
Jun 30 - 'Senior tax officials from Tanzania, Zambia and South Africa are working to establish a cross-border agreement that would enable revenue authorities to share information about specific taxpayers, the first inroads into an effort by countries across the continent to clamp down on tax avoidance. The three countries' revenue authorities met under the auspices of the Africa Tax Administration Forum, following a report last year put out by ActionAid.' See the report here.

See also:

Multinational profit shifting ‘erodes taxes’ Business Day
Jun 30 - Logan Wort, executive secretary of the African Tax Administration Forum said 'that tax authorities in Africa agreed that they would begin work on a multilateral agreement to exchange information on taxpayers, such as multinational companies, for tax purposes.'

Approaches and Impacts. IFIs Tax Policy in Developing Countries Eurodad and ActionAid

Jun 22 - 'Tax policy has been at the heart of policy advice from the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to developing countries for the last twenty years. This paper reviews existing literature on the IFIs approach to tax policy reform during the last decade.'

India: Black stays beautiful Business Today

Edition July 10 - 'A team from the OECD, led by its secretary general Angel Gurria, in New Delhi to attend a tax conference, was put on the back foot when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said slow international progress in dismantling banking secrecy laws hindered India's attempt to uncover money siphoned out of the country ... Agreements with some tax havens, for instance, come replete with safeguards that require investigations within India to generate credible evidence before any information is forthcoming.'

Cayman hits back at 'gloating' Singapore
GFS News
Jul 1 - 'The chairman of the Cayman Islands Stock Exchange [Anthony Travers] has hit back at claims that the jurisdiction is losing business to Singapore ... Travers was responding to comments by Raj Rajkumar, vice chairman of the Singapore Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, who said ... that investors were fleeing from more traditional offshore centres like Cayman and the British Virgin Islands to Singapore due to greater regulations in Europe and the US.'.

Isle of Man and Guernsey introduce new tax information policy The Telegraph

Jul 1 - 'The Isle of Man and Guernsey will begin to automatically exchange tax information with the EU from today, under the European Savings Tax Directive. ... John Christiansen, director of TJN, said he thought Guernsey and the Isle of Man had taken a "very positive step". ' See the TJN briefing on the European Savings Tax Directive.


Could the European Savings Tax Directive reforms finally be approved in July? Tax Research UK

Jun 25 - Richard Murphy comments on a Europolitics article on the European Savings Tax Directive. 'Radical reforms of the Directive are being proposed by the European Commission to first of all extend it to all companies and trusts (closing vast numbers of loopholes in the process) and to require the tax havens covered by the Directive (such as the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) to massively extend the data they will have to exchange ...'

Swiss finance minister says two issues delay tax deals-report Reuters

Jun 24 - On an issue we've been blogging - 'A withholding tax means the Swiss will not automatically share information on individual bank accounts, preserving the banking privacy that has been crucial to building up Switzerland's offshore wealth management industry.' Hat tip Markus Meinzer.


UK: Multinationals in line for £1bn tax break The Independent

Jul 1- Multinationals were given details of what amounts to a near £1bn tax break on their overseas profits yesterday – on the day thousands of public sector workers walked out on strike over cuts to their pensions.

Vampire Tax Havens: The Secret Drain on the Global Economy CSRWire

Jun 30 - 'Offshore tax havens are starving economies of the capital needed for productive investment and saddling governments with crippling deficits. The headlines scream it every day: city, state and national budgets are being cut, cut, cut. Citizens are up in arms, outraged ...'


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