John Christensen, the director of the Tax Justice Network, has a piece with the above title in the latest edition of New Europe, just published. It’s worth reproducing in full: European governments and citizens should be doubly alarmed by last week’s Bloomberg news story that Google Inc. has been paying tax at a rate of
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I am fascinated by the recent attack on my work and that of John Christensen and the Tax Justice Network by Cayman Finance. It is not new of course, many tax havens / secrecy jurisdictions have made such attacks before. And no doubt they will do is again. But in making such a tax they
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The Mail on Sunday reports: Channel 4 was last night embroiled in an explosive row with the Government over an investigation into the financial affairs of Cabinet Ministers. The documentary makes allegations about millionaire Ministers including Chancellor George Osborne, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond and International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell. Last night, all three men strongly
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The French Catholic newspaper La Croix has published a remarkable graph showing how far sentiments have changed recently, as to the causes of hunger and poverty in developing countries. In September 2010 they asked 985 people aged 18 and over to ask for their opinions about various issues with respect to poverty. Click the graph
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The new edition of the TJN publication ‚ÄòTax Justice Focus’ has just been published. This edition is dedicated to Switzerland and is available here . The edition explores the changing face of tax haven Switzerland. Historically one of the world’s most important secrecy jurisdictions, Switzerland – along with its financial services sector – has recently
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TJN Latin America has a new web site. It’s in Spanish, of course. It’s importance is that it marks the continuing spread of TJN in developing and intermediate countries. Congratulations to all involved.

Tax Justice Network has been producing piles of good blogs this week. I recommend its review of the new OECD peer review reports. As TJN notes: The linchpin of effective information exchange, of course — the number of pieces of information actually exchanged — is notably absent in this report (to get an idea of
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The Conservative Party in the UK is the home of some quite bizarre thinking – like belief in the Laffer curve. In the last week an MEP – Roger Helmer – accused Tax Justice Network’s John Christensen of not understanding Laffer. As he said: You describe tax competition between nations as "A Race to the
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My work on the tax gap, with the Tax Justice Network was referred to on BBC’s Question Time last night. Watch here. Started at 43.00 in. My thanks to the questioner who made the point incredibly well. Ian Hislop made his best points of the night on this issue – and Vince Cable had an
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