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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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U.S. Tax Plan’s Spiraling Consequences for Human Rights and Poverty – At Home and Abroad

As the United States Congress considers drastically altering its tax code, my organization — the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) — has brought the spiraling human rights costs of the proposed U.S. tax cuts to the attention of a leading UN human rights official visiting the U.S. to look into poverty in the country.

On Dec. 1 – the morning before the U.S. Senate rushed through a lopsided and dysfunctional tax plan to unfairly benefit the top tiers of the economy while costing ordinary people within and outside the U.S. dearly — the UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Philip Alston launched his official visit to the US to investigate the links between the growing phenomenon of poverty and human rights deprivations there.

In advance of his visit, we made a formal submission entitled Fiscal Impoverishment in the United States, warning that the Republican-backed tax plans would only deepen poverty and inequality within the U.S., while also enabling transnational tax abuse and undermining the ability of countries around the world to invest in human rights.

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Senate Votes to Increase Tax Avoidance, Offshore U.S. Jobs

Bipartisan Voices Agree that Senate Bill Will Increase Shifting of Production Overseas and Profits to Tax Havens
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Senate on Saturday passed its own version of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” — legislation that will reward offshore tax haven abuse and increase the incentive to outsource American jobs abroad, according to the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.

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