Fuels Tax Haven Industry and Increases Incentives to Move Operations Offshore
WASHINGTON, D.C – Today, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R.1), and the President has indicated he will soon sign it into law. Among its many provisions, the bill changes the way in which corporations are taxed.
The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition (FACT Coalition) sent a letter to House and Senate leadership opposing the final conference version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R.1).
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.
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.
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.
FACT Coalition Spokespeople Available to Comment on Tax Bills and Paradise Papers
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee’s amendments to the proposed tax legislation Monday evening nearly eliminated a safeguard in the tax bill meant to discourage some shifting of profits offshore by multinational corporations according to a score by Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation.
