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Major U.S. Businesses Endorse Ending Anonymous Companies

Commercial Support for Ownership Disclosure Grows as National Foreign Trade Council Backs Incorporation Transparency
Momentum continues to build in the fight to tackle the abuse of anonymous shell companies.

Richard Sawaya, the vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents major U.S. multinational businesses, just endorsed cracking down on money laundering and anonymous shell companies in a new op-ed in The Hill regarding Russia sanctions.

While the FACT Coalition takes no position on most of the content in the op-ed, the penultimate paragraph of the article says:
“Congress should focus on… incorporating new ideas… that would crack down on Russian money laundering and shell corporations, expose the financial crimes of Putin cronies, and prevent U.S. real estate from being a haven for kleptocrat money, all without measurably hurting the U.S. economy.”
NFTC—whose’s board of directors consists of major U.S. businesses including Caterpillar, Coca-Cola, Exxon, Fluor, General Electric, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, and Walmart—joins the entire financial services industry, the National Association of Realtors, the vast majority of small business owners, and other large companies such as Dow Chemical, Unilever, and Salesforce in pushing for incorporation transparency.

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Perilous Position: The U.S. Must Strengthen Transparency Laws for the Sake of National Security

These past few months, the fight against illicit finance received excellent news — the U.K. Government moved to require their Overseas Territories to disclose the real owners of companies they incorporate. Those territories include tax haven A-listers like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and the British Virgin Islands. These critical legislative actions taken by the British Government should similarly be adopted by the U.S. Congress — lest America risk becoming the favorite haven for dirty money.

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Do the B Team’s Tax Principles Raise or Lower the Bar? A Debate with TJN

On February 1, the B Team published “A New Bar for Responsible Tax: The B Team Responsible Tax Principles,” with the endorsement of nine corporations (Allianz, BHP, Maersk, Natura, Repsol, Safaricom, Shell, Unilever and Vodafone). I was privileged to serve as a member of the Company Working Group that oversaw the development of the Principles over the course of 2017, representing an investor perspective.

After several years of engagement with a variety of corporations on these issues on behalf of Domini Impact Investments, I am optimistic that the B Team’s work establishes a promising platform for meaningful dialogue with corporations about their tax practices. The Principles are not perfect, but I believe they represent an important step forward.

I was therefore very disappointed to see TJN’s critique of the Principles, The B-Team: Lowering the bar for tax transparency? I reached out to Alex Cobham, Chief Executive of Tax Justice Network, and both of us felt that our exchange would be worth sharing, as other organizations evaluate the B Team principles for themselves.

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New Legislation Would Close Significant Offshore Loopholes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) was a historic opportunity to reform the international tax code and finally put an end to the rampant shell games played by U.S. companies to avoid taxes. Unfortunately, the TCJA will likely increase offshore tax avoidance and increase the incentives for companies to move jobs and operations offshore. As a new ITEP report explains, TCJA creates many new breaks and loopholes for offshore corporate profits, and while several different bills have been introduced to close them, no one bill addresses all of them.

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Facebook Facing Shareholder Scrutiny for its Offshore Tax Avoidance

In recent months, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hauled before lawmakers in the United States and the European Union to respond to criticism of the company’s privacy policies and sharing of user data. Now the company’s dodgy tax practices are facing increased scrutiny from an even more important source: some of its own shareholders. In advance of its annual shareholders meeting on May 31, Facebook was confronted with a shareholder resolution (Proposal 8 on pg. 59) asking it to endorse a set of principles to guide its tax policy and to ensure that such principles consider the impact of its tax strategies on local economies and public services. The resolution is a signal from a group of concerned shareholders that Facebook’s tax avoidance hurts its reputation, the communities in which it operates, and creates financial risks to the company’s shareholders.

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There Is No Evidence That the New Tax Law Is Growing Our Economy or Creating Jobs

Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Proponents of the law used the occasion to tout its alleged economic benefits and argued that its temporary provisions should be made permanent. The title of the hearing was “Growing Our Economy and Creating Jobs,” but there is little evidence that the law does either of these things.

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