New Zealand Promotes Tax Evasion
We Vote Against UN Resolution for global tax overhaul.
Thanks to 50 of my Paid Subscribers “liking” this pos it is now free for everyone to read.
Here’s something you may not have heard because our news media didn’t pick up on it.
Just over two weeks ago the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to begin a historic global tax overhaul. To our shame, New Zealand voted against it.
Tax evasion and fraud is a huge international problem. According to an investigation by the Tax Justice Network, countries are losing US$492 billion in tax a year to multinational corporations and wealthy individuals using tax havens to underpay tax.
New Zealand is responsible for about $US 2 Billion a year of that evasion and just on half of that money – ie. $US 1 Billion was a loss to our own tax revenue collection .
Just think how much better our economy would be if tax cheats were actively prevented from stealing from our public purse.
The UN Vote was led by the African countries that voted in a bloc along with other developing countries. New Zealand joined the USA ,UK, Canada, Japan, and Israel in trying to actively block the resolution. Do you think you see a pattern here?
These are countries where the richest 1% control their respective democracies. It’s called Oligarchy and the rich don’t want tax transparency because they make much of their wealth by not paying their fair share.
As I understand it, New Zealand voted against the UN resolution because we apparently want to stick with the OECD tax rules. But the OECD’s own data demonstrates it’s rules have failed to stop massive tax evasion.
To quote from the Tax Justice Network investigation:
“Between 2016, when countries first began to implement the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) reforms, and 2021, the latest year for which data from the OECD on multinational corporations’ profits is available and by which point the reforms had been fully implemented, countries’ annual losses to multinational corporations shifting their profits offshore went up by more than US$36 billion from US$311 billion in 2016 to over US$347 billion in 2021.” (my emphasis).
November 22nd was a historic day at the UN in the battle to restore the principle of fairness to the economies of the world.
We voted not to have a bar of it.
Shameful.
It is thanks to my Paid Subscribers that I can continue to do my public journalism work . For just $9 a month you can join (and what with ) this great group of supportive people , plus get access to my podcasts and documentaries.
.And just a thought- with the Christmas soon upon us, you may also wish to consider giving a year’s access to Bryan Bruce Investigates as a present to a friend or whanau. Thank you
We should be with Africa and the developing countries on this - even though we are in a state of un-development. Wonder what the Atlas Network does to promote tax evasion?
Of course the NZ government voted against it! We are run by business donors to the right wing parties. It has been obvious for years that the rich & business owners do not pay the tax they should. IRD is tasked with making sure that tax evasion is pursued through the courts. They don’t appear to do a good job!
Last year, a builder in Auckland went bankrupt. As a part of the process, the firms bank accounts were published. One was with a bank in the British Virgin Islands! Why on earth does an Auckland based builder need a bank account there unless it was for tax evasion?