Paradise Papers

The Paradise Papers: A Year Later

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the release of The Paradise Papers, a leak that included 13 million documents from a large offshore law firm.  The leak detailed a number of tax avoidance techniques used by the wealthy and multinational corporations to avoid taxes.  At the same time, Congress was rushing to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

In light of the Paradise Papers revelations, we encouraged lawmakers to carefully review the information from the leak and consider whether their overhaul would address the tax dodging practices exposed.  They chose not to do so.

Unlike the earlier Panama Papers story, where Americans were notably absent, the Paradise Papers had clear U.S. connections.  There was extensive data on the tax avoidance schemes of at least 31,000 U.S. citizens, residents, and companies including household names like Apple, Nike, and Uber.  Rather than consider lessons to be learned around how policies might work in practice, lawmakers chose to ignore the warning signs.  The tax law passed just over a month later with minimal attention paid to any of the insights to be gleaned from the leak.  It should not be surprising that the law continues to encourage multinational corporations to engage in offshore tax schemes.

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Facebook Shareholders to Vote on Responsible Tax Principles

Tax Experts Travel to California to Present Proposal following November’s Paradise Papers Exposé
SAN FRANCISCO, California / WASHINGTON, D.C. — Facebook investors will vote Thursday on a proposal to require the company’s board to adopt responsible tax principles following the release of November’s Paradise Papers exposé, which exposed the structures behind massive tax dodging schemes of well-known multinational companies, including Apple, Facebook, and Nike.

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Shopping for a Tax Haven: How Nike and Apple Accelerated Their Tax Avoidance Strategies, according to the Paradise Papers

A year and a half after the release of the Panama Papers, a new set of data leaks, the Paradise Papers released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) provides important new information on the tax dodging of wealthy individuals as well as multinational corporations.

The leaked data, about 13.4 million files in total, exposes the tax avoidance schemes and strategies of wealthy and powerful individuals, as well as large corporations. More than 7 million of the files were obtained from the offshore law firm Appleby. The 119-year-old firm is a leading member of the global network of lawyers, accountants, bankers and other operatives who set up and manage offshore companies and bank accounts for clients who want to avoid taxes or keep their finances under wraps.

It is no secret that corporations like Nike and Apple are holding billions of dollars offshore for tax avoidance purposes, but the Paradise Papers give us a deeper look into what these tax avoidance schemes look like, and show that Apple’s leadership has aggressively moved to reinvent these schemes while simultaneously proclaiming their innocence.

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Remarks on Press Call about Nike Shareholder Resolution on Responsible Tax Practices

Clark Gascoigne, the deputy director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition (FACT Coalition) delivered remarks on a press call with reporters as the AFL-CIO and Domini Impact Investments announced that they were filing a shareholder resolution with Nike calling for responsible tax practices in the wake of the Paradise Papers leak.

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House Tax Plan Would Make Offshore Tax Avoidance Substantially Worse

The release of the Paradise Papers has once again brought the issue of offshore tax avoidance to the forefront of public discussion. The papers expose the complex structures that companies such as Apple and Nike have pursued in recent years to pay little to nothing in taxes on their offshore earnings.

Yet even as these revelations make headlines, House Republicans are moving forward with major tax legislation, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that would reward the worst tax avoiders and make it even easier for multinational companies to avoid taxes.

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