Today the European Parliament adopted the report by its Panama Papers inquiry committee and voted in favor of recommendations aimed at stopping corporate tax avoidance across the European Union. Oxfam welcomes the Parliament's call for EU member states to adopt the reforms needed to end corporate tax abuses.
The upcoming EU tax haven blacklist has to include at least 35 countries, including notorious tax havens such as Switzerland and Bermuda, in order to be effective, Oxfam finds in a new report published today. The analysis also shows that at least 4 EU countries would be blacklisted if the EU were to apply its own criteria to member states.
“The Panama Papers give us a disturbing look into the murky world of tax dodging, a problem that governments and international institutions refuse to tackle head-on. The true scandal is that many of the cases uncovered are not always illegal, but instead, fully legal practices that ruthless abuse a weak and inadequate tax system."