Global Financial Integrity (GFI), the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics and a team of global experts have released a study showing that since 1980 developing countries lost US$16.3 trillion dollars through broad leakages in the balance of payments, trade misinvoicing, and recorded financial transfers. These resources represent immense social costs that have been borne by the citizens of developing countries around the globe. Funding for the report was provided by the Research Council of Norway, and research assistance was provided by economists in Brazil, India, and Nigeria.
Today Global Financial Integrity (GFI) launches its new database tool—GFTrade—with real-time price analyses to measure trade misinvoicing risks for 80,000 goods categories. Trade misinvoicing accounts for hundreds of billions in illicit financial flows from developing countries, and in curtailing these outflows, GFTrade would generate millions of dollars in additional domestic revenue.
As the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flore (CITES) gathers in Johannesburg for its 17th Conference of the Parties, Global Financial Integrity (GFI) releases new estimates on the link between wildlife trafficking and the global shadow financial system. From a forthcoming report, to be published in November 2016, GFI finds that wildlife trafficking generates an estimated US$5 to $23 billion in revenues each year.
Heather Lowe, +1 202 293 0740 ext. 228
“Today, neither legislators nor investors have any reliable information about multinationals’ profit shifting practices apart from the result of them—less revenue in the U.S. treasury and greater risk of enforcement actions worth billions of dollars,” commented Heather Lowe, Legal Counsel and Director of Government Affairs at Global Financial Integrity.
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...
Heather Lowe, +1 202 293 0740 ext. 228
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.
Christine Clough, PMP
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.
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.
