Cracks in the broken tax system exposed as the European court rules that a tax deal between Luxembourg and Fiat was illegal state aid, while another between the Netherlands and Starbucks was not.

Today, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released another ground breaking tax exposure. The #MauritiusLeaks show how multinational corporations from all over the world have used Mauritius to avoid taxes, including on their own operations in some of the world’s poorest countries.

Under the headline Grand Theft Europe, the newsroom Correctiv, together with media outlets across Europe, have published the results of a cross-boundary investigation about large-scale international fraud with value added tax (VAT). According to the European Commission, this type of fraud is costing European governments around €50 billion each year.

New preliminary aid figures released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) today show spending in 2018 fell by 2.7 per cent compared to 2017, with the neediest countries being hit hardest.

The new World Economic Outlook released today indicates that the world economic situation is deteriorating. Many poor countries have already been struck by debt crises.

The selection of David Malpass as the new president of the World Bank is a missed opportunity to put an end to the gentlemen's agreement and strengthen the legitimacy of the World Bank. 

Today, the European Court of Justice ruled against the European Commission, which had alleged that the Belgian tax scheme, known as the ‘excess profit scheme,’ provided illegal state aid worth around €700 million to multinational corporations.

Today, the European Commission kick-started the debate on whether to change EU decision making on tax matters, suggesting a stepwise move towards qualified majority voting, including giving an active role to the European Parliament.

The failure of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee’s to agree tough new rules governing aid invested in the private sector - private sector instruments - was criticised by Oxfam and the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) today. 

The IMF is attaching an increasing number of conditions to its loans to crisis-hit countries – and many of these promote harsh austerity measures which are damaging countries’ ability to provide essential services to their citizens, for example health services.