FINANCE
The Tug of War between Kleptocrats and Tax Justice….
- Alex Cobham
Chief Executive, Tax Justice Network
- Ed Siddons
- Rob Byrne
Guernsey-based investigative and podcast journalist
We look at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism story about a Syrian kleptocrat and alleged war criminal, and the British Crown Dependency of Guernsey. It throws up all kinds of questions about policing compliance, enforcement and the need for public beneficial ownership registers, with good quality information.
“Very often it is not journalists following police investigations, it’s police investigations following journalists…we need open ownership, we can’t just rely on leaks, this can’t be left to chance.” ~ Ed Siddons, Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Also, on day one of his presidency, Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the OECD’s global minimum tax deal. So what now? We’ll talk to the Tax Justice Network’s Alex Cobham: “This isn’t so much ‘America first,’ as ‘America only.’ This is the clearest, most direct threat to every other country’s tax sovereignty.”
The person who actually benefits from the income or capital associated with owning something, and/or on whose behalf a transaction is being conducted. They are often different from legal or nominee owners, who may just be proxies who get no benefit from the asset, whose identity is used to hide the real beneficial owner.
A tax haven or secrecy jurisdiction is a place that deliberately provides an escape route for people or entities who live or operate elsewhere. They shield them from whatever taxes, criminal laws, financial regulations, transparency or other constraints they don’t like. Ordinary people whose lives are affected by tax haven laws are not consulted on these laws because they live in other countries: they have no say in how those laws are made, thus undermining their democratic rights.
A trust is an arrangement that separates out ownership of an asset. Under a standard trust a person gives up an asset for the benefit of someone else (the beneficiary) under a set of rules (the trust deed.) These rules are enforced by a third person, the trustee. Trusts are used extensively in tax havens, whose laws provide secrecy which allows the original owner to pretend to have given away the asset while in reality still controlling it. This allows them to potentially escape the tax bill on its income, or hide links to money laundering or other criminal activity.
A tax haven or secrecy jurisdiction is a place that deliberately provides an escape route for people or entities who live or operate elsewhere. They shield them from whatever taxes, criminal laws, financial regulations, transparency or other constraints they don’t like. Ordinary people whose lives are affected by tax haven laws are not consulted on these laws because they live in other countries: they have no say in how those laws are made, thus undermining their democratic rights.
A trust is an arrangement that separates out ownership of an asset. Under a standard trust a person gives up an asset for the benefit of someone else (the beneficiary) under a set of rules (the trust deed.) These rules are enforced by a third person, the trustee. Trusts are used extensively in tax havens, whose laws provide secrecy which allows the original owner to pretend to have given away the asset while in reality still controlling it. This allows them to potentially escape the tax bill on its income, or hide links to money laundering or other criminal activity.
Establishing a UN tax convention would make sure equitable international tax rules are established through a genuinely representative process and made legally binding globally.
Richard Allen comes across a massive tax fraud that makes the Channel Islands loophole look like a tea party. He teams up with two more retailers whose businesses are being destroyed by it and they start to apply pressure to the tax authorities, HMRC, who seem reluctant to take on big online market players Amazon and eBay.
Music (in order of use) is courtesy of Cherry Red Records: Steal No Egg by Electric Orange and Movement by Praise Space Electric.
This is a Tax Justice Network podcast with Naomi Fowler of the Taxcast podcast. Produced by Naomi Fowler and Leo Schick and sound designed by Leo Schick.
Tax evasion is an illegal – usually criminal – activity, by which a taxpayer escapes tax through deception. Tax avoidance, on the other hand, means getting around (or avoiding) the spirit of the law without actually breaking the law. There is a large grey area between the two poles of avoidance and evasion.
Tax evasion is an illegal – usually criminal – activity, by which a taxpayer escapes tax through deception. Tax avoidance, on the other hand, means getting around (or avoiding) the spirit of the law without actually breaking the law. There is a large grey area between the two poles of avoidance and evasion.
A tax haven or secrecy jurisdiction is a place that deliberately provides an escape route for people or entities who live or operate elsewhere. They shield them from whatever taxes, criminal laws, financial regulations, transparency or other constraints they don’t like. Ordinary people whose lives are affected by tax haven laws are not consulted on these laws because they live in other countries: they have no say in how those laws are made, thus undermining their democratic rights.
“Tax is one of the smartest investments you can make.” That’s Professor Chris Harrop’s promise to companies, and his new tax funded impact model proves it by helping quantify how paying tax is not only good for their businesses, but for the economies they’re operating in, and of course for people and society.
Plus: Why have OECD countries just bent the knee to Donald Trump and given up their sovereign rights to tax US businesses operating within their own borders? Naomi Fowler speaks with Zorka Millin of the FACT Coalition about how US companies now have an exemption from the global minimum corporate tax. Also, Zorka discusses some progress on the Corporate Transparency Act’s rollercoaster journey in the US towards setting up a beneficial ownership register – a court ruling has pushed things a little further forward, which is good news since the United States is the world’s biggest financial secrecy offender. Now some of the watering down of the act needs to be reversed…
And finally, the UK has strengthened its whistleblower reward scheme, lawyer Mary Inman of Whistleblower Partners tells us more.
Produced by Tax Justice Network
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