It looks like the latest edition of International Tax Review is going to be worth a read. It includes a special section on tax transparency:  

Richard Exell at the TUC has produced a first rate blog including a great deal of data on the way the UK tax system is working at present. It’s available here and I strongly recommend it.

The Tax Justice Network’s got a great blog on this subject this morning. I suggest a quick trip there to read it. 

An efficient taxation system has nine attributes with one over-riding characteristic to which they all contribute. An efficient tax system is: 1. Comprehensive – in other words, it is broad based; 2. Complete – with as few loopholes as possible; 3. Comprehensible – it is as certain as is reasonably possible; 4. Compassionate – it takes
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David Cay Johnston, a top U.S. tax writer, has left Tax Analysts for Reuters, leaving with a superbly thoughtful piece entitled A Cosmic Visitor’s Take on Tax. He poses the question of what extraterrestrials would make of earth taxes, and comes up with something that everyone is urged to read. Written quite strongly from a U.S. perspective,
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I have mentioned the fact that I was in exchange with Conservative MPs at yesterday’s hearing of the Treasury Select Committee. Such was the time they spent questioning me we did not have time to discuss what might be done about the risk of perception of conflicts of intrest on the part of treasury ministers on tax matters. As
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I couldn’t have imagined how sensitive the Tories are about George Osborne and how keen they are to protect him. I made what I thought was a perfectly clear point before the Treasury Select Committee yesterday when I said that the timing of the announcement of the Vodafone tax deal almost a year ago just a week before Osborne
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Another reflection from yesterday’s discussion at the House of Lords. There was another area of surprising unanimity between the CIOT and me. The CIOT argued that there was a serious problem with the opposition, back bench MPs and the House of Lords having to scrabble around amongst a few willing advisers (me included) to secure
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Dawn Primarolo was the unlikely hero of yesterday’s hearing before the House of Lords. The subject of a GAAR or General Anti-Avoidance Principle as I’d prefer came up, partly in its own right and partly in the context of the need to tackle the abuse going on in Employee Benefit Trusts (or Tax Cheating Arrangements,
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