I’ve been giving the recent KPMG paper on tax and CSR a more thorough read. It’s made me think a lot, but as usual with KPMG publications my thoughts have flowed along two themes.
The first is what it does not say, on which there’s enough to write a small book. I might just get around […]
Each year the Berne Declaration presents the “Public Eye” awards during the Davos economic summit.
One award made each year is for Corporate Irresponsibility. The usual criteria for selection is choosing to do the wrong thing when knowing what the right thing was.
The Tax Justice Network and the Association for Accountancy & Business Affairs have nominated […]
Just launched is the SEE Companies ethical accreditation scheme for companies that identifies companies taking social, environmental and ethical (SEE) issues seriously.
I welcome this: most CSR investment screening is simple greenwash. Take the tax questions as an example (into which I’ll disclose I had an input) which require a company to answer the question:
Has your […]
The UK’s Chartered Institute of Tax ran a conference on the above theme on Tuesday. I was one of the speakers. My slides are here for those interested. They give a reasonable overview of what I said.
What was interesting was the convergence of ideas. Dave Hartnett, Director General of HMRC stole some of my themes […]
The second quarter 2007 edition of Tax Justice Focus (TJF) is a special edition on accountability, co-edited by Nicholas Shaxson and John Christensen. A central theme of this issue is that taxation helps foster political accountability - and that this outcome has been all but forgotten, especially in poor countries.
In the editorial, “Wake Up, Donors”, […]
Down here in Oxford an academic took me aside to discuss my comments on Mike Devereux’s work, published hereon Monday. His argument was that a company can pay tax, but can’t bear it. In other words, he argued in support of Mike that the tax charge on a corporation can be passed on to labour, […]
According to the Ethical Corporation the UK government’s commitment to corporate responsibility has been downgraded somewhat.
The DTI has a minister whose portfolio includes corporate responsibility. She is now supported by just one half time official. Impressive, isn’t it? This makes something of a mockery of their web site which claims:
Welcome to the Government’s website on […]
Reports have been made of the highest earning hedge fund managers in the US in 2006. You don’t get into the list unless you’re earning US$700 million a year. You top it with US$2 billion.
I readily admit, I don’t know the people named in the report. Nothing I’m going to write here is personal. But, […]
The CORE Coalition and Save the Children have published a report on why CSR does not work. I recommend reading the press release, even if you don’t get to the whole thing. The report says that:
“voluntary initiatives alone are wholly inadequate as a means of improving the lives of children. This is because they fail […]
Nils Pratley is a Guardian columnist to whose opinion I usually pay little attention. But he caught my eye today. Writing on the raid on Cadbury Schweppes by the US hedge fund led by Nelson Peltz, infamous for his tussle with Heinz which cost 2,700 of its employees their jobs, he says:
He will be in […]
