This is the UK action plan from the G8 summit on beneficial ownership. My comments are embedded between the quotes: UK Action Plan to prevent the misuse of companies and legal arrangements The UK is committed to fully implementing the revised Financial Action Task Force standards in order to improve the transparency of the ownership and
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One of David Cameron’s main aims for the G8 has been to get central registries of the beneficial ownership of all companies and maybe trusts. Osborne flagged it up on the Today programme this morning. Paul Collier, Cameron’s adviser on this issue, made clear it’s the lowest hanging fruit that exists to beat offshore secret
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The G8 will talk about tax automatic information exchange today. And it will talk about disclosing the beneficial ownership of companies and trusts and I welcome both moves. However, just as it is important to remember that corporate tax transparency begins at home, so too is it important to recall that automatic information exchange should also be on the domestic agenda.
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I have already written of my concerns about Cameron's announcement on transparency, but I think those concerns still need further elaboration. The reason is that, based on comments made by Cameron, Danny Alexander and others it seems likely that the duty to disclose beneficial ownership will be imposed on companies. Now let's ignore for a
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In 2011 I published a report researching the disastrous UK Register of Companies. In it I drew attention to the fact that in 2009-10 ovr 500,000 companies – or little short of one in five companies in the UK – was 'struck off' the UK register of companies. Most shockingly, 325,000 of those companies were
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The Guardian has reported this morning that: In an announcement likely to be welcomed by campaign groups [David Cameron] says: “Here in the UK we are going to have a register of beneficial ownership, and we are going to consult on whether it should be public or not. I know in the end everyone would like total
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Vince Cable has a rather shabby article in the Observer today. Superficially it reads well, starting: The G8 summit is a real chance to clean up the mess that is international tax law. Public faith in tax system has been seriously dented by the actions of a few top companies – which say they are
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As the Observer notes today, the backlash against Cameron’s drive for transparency is growing. Now, I regret that, but I also regret the utter hypocrisy inherent in Cameron’s demands. As the Observer reports: In a determined attempt to tackle the problem before the G8 summit, the prime minister has been strongly promoting a plan that would make companies legally responsible for keeping a
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The UK’s investigative and satirical magazine Private Eye has produced a major new investigation into corporate crime, handled via the United Kingdom. The subtitle of the piece ‘how UK ghost companies made Britain the capital of corporate crime” is quite apt, notwithstanding the best efforts of jurisdictions like New Zealand to outdo the UK. The
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