My del.icio.us bookmarks for August 4th

These are my links for August 4th:

• News – Europe: Sars adds muscle to tax haven inquiry – The impact of cracking Liechtenstein ripples ever outwards. Which is great news.
• McCain's camp suffers from a paper gap – Avi Zenilman – Politico.com – Interesting. But then McCain need not spell out his plans, just read the collective output of the Washington Consensus.
• Scrapping zero VAT rate will help poor families, says IFS – Accountancy Age – Very little has made me as angry as this for a long time. I'll be blogging it in detail on Monday. Suffice to say for now that it has confirmed what I have always thought, that the IFS is a bastion of neo-liberal thinking promoted to assist the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
• Should we be concerned over new Reg FD guidance? | AccMan – "When I read US 10-Q’s and 10-K’s, I’m always astonished at the lack of information they contain. Despite being lengthy documents, I rarely find the sort of nuggets I’d expect to help me get a better understanding of what’s going on. Compare that with published UK accounts and there are any number of clues on performance." I agree: the US is miles behind
• FT.com / Companies / Energy Utilities Mining – Centrica chief defends higher bills – I could live with this if it funded the Green New Deal. I could live with this if it included better provision to prevent fuel poverty. When it is being used to fund 16% dividend increases now, and no doubt more in the future I see this as what it is: exploitation of the scarce resources of the planet for the benefit of the few. It doesn't matter who wins the next election, they'll have to stop this abuse and the Tories will fail if they don't.
• Michael Meacher – Labour's Future: The Way Out of the Impasse for Labour – As Michael says, for the last 11 years under New Labour the governance of society and the economy has been dominated by the neo-liberal agenda, an extension of the Reagan-Thatcher programme of the 1980s. Unless that changes Labour's dead
• The Associated Press: States face tough choices as budget crisis deepens – As of June, more than 30 states faced deficits totaling a projected $40 billion, or more than triple the gap of the previous year, according to the NCSL.

  But we know there's $58 billion of uncollected payroll tax. Anyone see the link?

• WRS | Environmentalists take axe to timber trade – The Tax Justice Network wants all multinational companies to report their trading activities on a country by country basis.
• EUobserver: Could the credit crunch destroy the Eurozone? – Keynesian fiscal policy is very relevant today. Ultimately, when nobody else is willing to spend and when credit is tight, it is government which must spent its way out of the crisis.
• BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Logging firms 'avoid Congo tax' – Danzer offer comment on 'Conning the Congo'
• Shareholders rocked by water chief's past – Accountancy Age – Who's embarrassed by Northern Rock?
• FT.com / Companies / Financial services – Provident picks up business from the banks – The Bradford-based company said tighter credit conditions offered it an opportunity to expand its small-scale doorstep lending to low-income householders unable to borrow elsewhere. And so their abuse of the most vulnerable in our society continues.
• FT.com / Companies / Transport – United sues pilots’ union over cancellations – Capital v labour is getting ugly
• Taxman must be wary of All-out war on advisers – I agree, but without an effective Code of Conduct to which compliant subscribers could subscribe the profession is not helping itself because it isn't pushing the bad apples out of the fold. We've written that Code, of course. Check the categories link on
• FT.com / Companies / Financial services – Bank distress worries return to haunt UK – "Although four of the country’s biggest banks, including RBS, HBOS and Barclays, have raised about £21bn to repair battered balance sheets through rights issues and placings, analysts are questioning whether this is enough." Let's face it – the system