Financial Transparency Coalition

The Financial Times is running an editorial today entitled a taxing world which is mostly very good. First, though, after a brief exploration of the UK Uncut phenomenon ("the group has a point") there is something we’d disagree with. The FT says this:

Tax avoidance is legal and legitimate. Unlike tax evasion, it is not obviously immoral to exploit the tax code to pay the least that is legally required.

It is up to government to plug the leaks, the FT said. No. For starters, as we constantly argue, what is legal is not necessarily what...

A few weeks ago ten activists, mostly in their twenties, met in the Nag's Head pub in North London and started to discuss protesting against severe austerity measures being implemented by Britain's coalition govermnent. Instead of protesting simply against cuts, they thought it would be more interesting to launch a strike against tax-dodging  multinational corporations. Building on analyses of the UK's so-called Tax Gap, a subject where the Tax Justice Network's Senior Adviser Richard Murphy has been especially influential, the young activists could see this was a clear and coherent alternative to the government's austerity programme. The group called...