Financial Transparency Coalition

Today we would like to highlight two recent blogs from two of Eurodad members, which discuss some positive developments in the tax transparency arena. Firstly, following Action Aid’s recent report on SABMiller and its abusive transfer pricing practices in developing countries, several tax authorities in Africa are conducting further investigations on the company’s operations. “African tax authorities have not only acknowledged the impact of ActionAid’s recent report highlighting tax avoidance by the global brewing company SABMiller, but also committed to doing something new in response to it. Meeting last week to discuss our report under the auspices of the African...

Co-Authored by Maria José Romero and Rachel Sharpe

A new report by Eurodad and Action Aid

Tax policy has been at the heart of policy advice from the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to developing countries for the last twenty years. Tax reforms became an increasingly important part of the structural adjustment programmes promoted by the World Bank and the IMF in developing countries from the late 1980’s. This paper reviews existing literature on the IFIs approach to tax policy reform during the last decade. NGO and academic research suggest that the IFIs have used technical assistance and policy advice to encourage developing...

The European Commission has recently opened a consultation process until 23 August 2010 calling for views to modify a regulation that sets out minimum transparency requirements for listed companies. The Transparency Directive was adopted in 2004 with the aim of improving the information available to investors on companies’ performances to help them make investment decisions. Now, the so-called TOD Directive is under revision. Where the directive currently falls down As it currently stands, while the Directive covers a large range of firms, namely, those whose securities are admitted to trading on a regulated market, it only offers EU Member States the possibility...

On 15^th June the European Parliament passed a resolution on progress towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): mid-term review in preparation for the UN high-level meeting in September 2010. This resolution sets out a number of recommendations for EU Member States ahead of the summit. It acknowledges that “all eight MDGs are currently off-target” and asks member states to adopt a leading, ambitious and united position to meet the MDGs before the 2015 deadline. Overall, this resolution is more ambitious than the position adopted by EU Member...