Financial Transparency Coalition

This year saw a great deal of progress on financial transparency. From the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg to 10 Downing Street, the world has committed to more transparency both in words and in actions. Specifically, the events of this year have shown the world is eager to cooperate on issues of transparency and there is significant momentum building for significant and sustainable change. Here’s a review of some of the big events in 2013. Many of the developments in 2013 showed the world is more willing to cooperate on issues of transparency. At its heart, transparency requires cooperation....

Last year, inspired by TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year, I picked ten individuals as nominees for a “Transparency Person of the Year.” Keeping with TIME’s definition, these would be people who influenced the news, for better or worse, on issues related to financial transparency. Keeping with the tradition, here are my picks for 2013. DAVID CAMERON. The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister has led a charge to change worldwide standards on beneficial ownership. In October of this year, the Prime Minister promised to make information on the beneficial ownership of companies available on public registries. Through these registries, the UK...

What is "fair"? There are lots of different ways to see it. According to the Americans for Tax Fairness tax fairness means making corporations and wealthy individuals “pay their fair share.” For those at CATO, tax fairness is an Alternative Minimum Tax (or flat tax). Ultimately, though, tax fairness is a normative concept. It’s helpful, then, to consider what society as a whole considers fair. People’s opinions about this question matters, not only in a theoretical sense, but also because we want to maximize society’s happiness overall. To accomplish this, we need a tax system that aligns with society’s preferences. While people do...

After decades of sanctions and years of negotiations, the permanent members of the UN Security Council (and Germany) have reached a temporary deal on Iran’s nuclear program. Under the agreement, for the next six months, Iran will halt activities that would enable it to make a nuclear weapon and allow international inspectors to dramatically increase their oversight of the program. In exchange, the United Nations and the United States will ease international economic and financial sanctions (including by unfreezing billions in Iranian assets abroad). Not everyone is happy with the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it an “historic...