ISODEC holds stakeholders' forum on Tax Haven Secrecy

Accra, Oct. 7, GNA - The Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) and the Ghana Tax Justice Coalition have petitioned the G20 and the Europea= n Union (EU), to introduce measures to end 93Tax Haven Secrecy". The petition, to be channelled through the G20 country Embassies and the EU Ambassador in Ghana, would be discussed at the forthcoming G20 leaders meeting in France in November this year. The two groups asked that the leaders should impress upon the multinational companies to report on the profits made and taxes paid in every country in which they operated. They also asked that there should be an automatic exchange of information between different tax jurisdictions, which would help developin= g countries collect taxes they were owed. Mr Abdullah Ali-Nakyea, a Tax Expert, who was addressing a stakeholders' forum in Accra, argued that Tax Haven Secrecy allowed multinational companies to hide profits and avoid paying taxes in developin= g countries, leading to huge revenue losses. He said the activities of Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs) also known as 93Tax Havens", were said to cost developing countries over a hundred billion dollars every year, an amount which is estimated to be more than th= e entire global aid budget.

Mr Ali-Nakyea said Ghana was also quoted in a research by Lars Koch-IBIS, an NGO, in 2011 as having lost approximately 4.9 billion dollars between 1970 and 2008 as a result of capital flight. He expressed the hope that the petition would receive urgent attention and action as the G20, which constituted the world's leading industrialis= ed countries meet, to help correct the financial injustice for the benefit of the world's poorest countries.

Mr Ali-Nakyea said developing countries including Ghana, faced major challenges that patronised their ability to mobilise adequate domestic tax revenue to finance their national development and particularly to provide basic essential social services such as education, health, water and sanitation for their people. He stressed that through challenges such as corruption by some government officials, racketeering and counterfeiting, those countries had become helpless victims of an unjust global financial system that provided incentives for the preparation of such criminal acts by providing secrecy financial jurisdictions for such illicit financial flows.

"Unless the veil of secrecy was lifted, all the talk about helping l= ift the world's poor out of poverty shall remain nothing but mere rhetoric.= " Mr Ali-Nakyea stressed that without firm commitments from the leaders, the millions of malnourished children, with a lot more being denied access to basic education and the general poverty level in developing countries would be worsened. Bishop Akologo, Executive director-ISODEC, explained that the forum was in solidarity with the global campaign to end the tax haven secrecy, an= d in furtherance of its campaign objective of seeking a fair and just tax system in Ghana, 93joins the Global Action Day to mark the inception of th= e campaign to end tax haven secrecy.

He said the campaign, if successful would help countries like Ghana t= o become domestic revenue sufficient with a tax system that was not only efficient, but also pro-poor and progressive.