Last week I interviewed a number of anti-poverty activists full of hope ahead of the G8 summit, praising David Cameron's courage in pushing the issue to the top of the summit agenda. For the British government, the political calculation is clear; the electoral advantage in convincing a public outraged by serial revelations about tax dodging that major international firms are being forced to pay their share should outweigh the interests of keeping those firms happy. All the G8 nations lose money to tax havens; developing nations lose more than they receive in aid, as multinationals extract resources and hide their business in shell companies based offshore. The summit concluded with much fanfare about a breakthrough in fighting tax evasion; but the devil is in the detail. Campaigners wanted two things: a set of international rules on exchange of tax information, and a pubic registry of beneficial ownership that shows who really owns companies. On the former, the G8 agreed to exchange information with one another, but doubts remain over how much developing countries will get access to that information, with the US particularly having pushed for exchanges to be reciprocal, when most developing nations just don't have the bureaucracy to collect that kind of information. On the latter, the UK was alone in pushing for public registries. A 10 point plan was agreed that says lots of the right things, but doesn't give member countries any deadlines for action. I'm reminded of the fact that a quarter of the aid promised to developing countries at the 2005 G8 summit has yet to be received; set-piece summit diplomacy continues to make grandiose promises, but deliver very little.
Here's my report on the G8 and tax evasion for Channel News Asia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRqZYG2EoR8
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