Two global transparency initiatives are underway that could help tackle financial crimes including tax evasion, money laundering and corruption: registration of beneficial ownership for companies (to identify the real persons owning or controlling such companies) and automatic exchange of bank...

In this paper we use the recently developed Bilateral Financial Secrecy Index to evaluate which countries supply most secrecy to EU Member States. Then, we assess how well-aimed are two of the EU's recent policy efforts to increase financial transparency: automatic Country-by-Country Reporting...

Automatic exchange of bank account information could reveal more than just the locations and amounts of offshore money holdings. It could also improve beneficial ownership transparency because it can help identify individuals who choose to place their offshore holdings not directly under their...

Under the current system of separate accounting, tax-motivated international profit shifting results in misalignment of profits and real economic activity. While the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Base Erosion and Profit Shifting initiative aims to measure and...

Progressive direct taxation is necessary to complement social protection, in order to reduce income inequality as well as poverty. A new metric of personal income tax incidence progressivity (the "Plato Index") is presented, using WIDER databases for income inequality (WIID) and tax revenues...

This paper evaluates the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) recently proposed by the European Commission. We find that if the CCCTB is introduced as it is currently proposed (including loss consolidation), then it is likely to impose large tax revenue costs of about one fifth of the...