September 7, 2016
Call follows alarm over range of threats to investments from anonymous company owners ** Read the full letter to the Senate HERE and House HERE ** Washington, DC — Today global investors managing over $740 billion in assets are calling for the...
June 29, 2016
Today the U.S. Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published a rule, which will become final tomorrow, requiring the U.S. parent company of large, public and privately held multinational companies to provide certain financial data to the IRS on a country-by-country basis. The information is meant to provide tax authorities with better tools to identify where a company might be artificially shifting profits into tax havens—a red flag for tax evasion and tax avoidance that may warrant further investigation.
May 12, 2016
Global Financial Integrity (GFI) Legal Counsel and Director of Government Affairs Heather Lowe will testify at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on Friday during a public hearing on a proposed rulemaking, “Country-by-Country Reporting” that would require companies that file tax returns in the U.S. to include a country-by-country breakdown of income earned and taxes paid. GFI, as a member of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition, has been supporting the IRS proposal as well as calling for additional language to strengthen and clarify the rulemaking, including a call for the information to be publicly available.
May 12, 2016
RE: Testimony at Hearing May 13, 2016
on IRS REG-109822-15: Country-by-Country Reporting
Thank you for the opportunity to testify on this globally significant topic today. My name is Heather Lowe, and I am Legal Counsel and Director of Government Affairs at Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy organization based in Washington, DC that focuses on curtailing the movement of illicit money, with a specific focus on its effect on development and developing countries.
May 9, 2016
The U.S. Departments of Treasury and Justice announced a raft of measures and proposals to address critical vulnerabilities in the U.S. financial system on May 5th, following actions taken by other countries in response to the Panama Papers disclosures. GFI welcomes the introduction of these measures after a four year process but urges Treasury and Justice to fix serious gaps in the requirements for identifying the beneficial owners of companies.
April 3, 2016
Leaked documents from global law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed today by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) bring to light a global shadow financial system for the rich and powerful of the world for many billions of dollars worth of transactions, noted Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington, DC-based research and advisory organization. More than 11.5 million documents implicate familiar names with abuse of financial secrecy, including UBS, HSBC, Société Générale, Cyprus, Switzerland, and the British Virgin Islands.
March 22, 2016
Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and over 100 other members of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition have submitted a letter to the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) and to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) urging them to maintain and strengthen a proposed rule on Country-by-Country Reporting that would bring much needed transparency to how U.S.-based companies book profits and pay taxes in many of the countries in which they have subsidiaries. The proposed rule is meant to give the IRS and, potentially, foreign tax authorities, a window into how multinational companies may be gaming the international tax system and avoiding taxation in the U.S. and other countries. Today is the final day to submit public comments to Treasury and the IRS on the proposed rulemaking.
February 19, 2016
WASHINGTON, DC—Former President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki and members of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa (HLP) concluded their latest visit to the United States today. Chaired by Mr. Mbeki, the group met with government representatives, civil society experts, the business community, and journalists to continue promoting the HLP’s report and urging action to curtail illicit flows in Africa.
“Illicit outflows stemming from trade misinvoicing is the most damaging economic condition in Africa today,” said GFI President Raymond Baker, a member of the High Level Panel. “This is a key point in the HLP’s report, Track It; Stop It; Get It, and an argument that GFI has been making for years in our annual estimates of illicit outflows from all developing countries.”