The UK should delay plans to push through further austerity measures worth £10 billion (€12 billion), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned on Wednesday. Speaking on Wednesday (22 May) following the completion of ...

EU leaders in Brussels for a special summit on tax evasion and fraud hailed new political "momentum" on the issue, but few concrete measures were agreed to recoup the estimated €1 trillion yearly in lost revenues. The ...

An EU summit on the issue of tax co-ordination on Wednesday (22 May) is likely to put more pressure on low-tax countries like Ireland amid revelations in the US that Apple and other large corporations are using EU-based ...

EU leaders have been put on the defensive after development charity Oxfam accused them of turning a blind eye to €9.5 trillion hidden in European tax havens. Oxfam, which lambasted what it described as EU "hypocrisy" ...

EU leaders will make another bid to agree rules on tax evasion after UK Prime Minister David Cameron called on 10 British tax havens to "get their house in order" on secret bank accounts. In a letter released Monday (20 ...

Energy and tax policy are on next WEEK’s agenda as European leaders gather in Brussels for a summit on Wednesday (22 May). Member states want to harvest an estimated €1 trillion lost every year to tax evasion. It is ...

Austria and Luxembourg have blocked an EU deal to increase tax transparency. Their finance ministers dug in their heels at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday (14 May) despite pressure from major EU states. Speaking to ...

The European Commission wants to tighten tax loopholes on savings of EU citizens who hold accounts in member states and in Switzerland, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and Lichtenstein. "We are looking for an ambitious ...

Tax havens and banking transparency top this week’s agenda as EU finance ministers meet to discuss the issue on Tuesday (14 May). The ministers are set to adopt a mandate enabling the European Commission to negotiate ...

British tax havens in the Caribbean have agreed to provide information on offshore bank accounts (2 May), in a step which increases the prospect of an EU-wide agreement on information exchange on overseas accounts used ...

Danes and Swedes are the highest taxed people in Europe, according to research published on Monday (29 April). Denmark and Sweden claim tax revenues accounting for 47.7 percent of economic output and 44.5 percent ...

The EU is hoping to reach agreement on automatic exchange of data on overseas bank accounts, according to a letter sent to national capitals on Wednesday (24 April). A letter from Irish finance minister Michael Noonan ...

Prospects of an EU tax on financial transactions have been put into question by confusion on how it would work and a legal challenge by the UK. A six-page-long memo drafted by civil servants in the EU Council last week ...

Tax evasion has risen to prominence on the EU agenda following the money laundering discussions surrounding Cyprus' bailout and the recent revelations concerning Europeans hiding their wealth in complex offshore schemes ...

Switzerland should reject EU plans for mandatory information exchange on bank accounts, the country's President has said. His statements comes amid new momentum in the EU to establish a system of automatic exchange of ...

France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK have agreed to more automatic exchanges of banking data to fight tax evasion, increasing pressure on Austria and Luxembourg to give up their veto on the equivalent EU bill. In a ...

All members of France's Socialist government are to publish their financial assets within days as President Francois Hollande struggles to overcome a tax fraud scandal involving his former budget minister. Prime ...

Trade and tax are likely to take centre stage when US treasury secretary Jacob Lew visits EU leaders this week. Lew will meet with European Council and Commission heads Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso in ...

The European Commission was under fire Thursday (14 February) over claims that its planned tax on financial transactions (FTT) would lead to double taxation. Unveiling the plans for an FTT backed by 11 EU countries, ...

Individual staff should be fined up to €5 million and firms, such as banks, should be fined 10 percent of turnover if they flout anti-money-laundering rules, the European Commission has proposed. It put out its latest ...

A European tax on financial transactions has moved a step closer to reality after EU finance ministers gave the go-ahead for 11 countries to put it into law. Ministers at the Ecofin meeting in Brussels on Tuesday (22 ...

The Italian economy will run a balanced budget in 2013 before returning to growth the following year, the country's outgoing finance minister has told the European Parliament. Speaking with MEPs on the Parliament's ...

EU tax commissioner Algirdas Semeta has called on the Irish presidency to break the log-jam on proposed EU tax legislation, while saying that Brussels has no plans to harmonise national tax rates. Speaking to the Irish ...

French president Francois Hollande suffered a major political blow over the weekend when his flagship policy to heavily tax the very rich was struck down. The Constitutional Council on Saturday (29 December) ruled that ...

EU countries must apply common tax rules to combat tax havens and loopholes allowing businesses to avoid corporation tax, according to new proposals released on Thursday (6 December) by the European Commission. The ...

Governments should tax property and consumption ahead of income according to the Commission's 2013 Annual Growth Survey published on Wednesday (28 November). Tax framework should be revised to provide "more incentive ...

The mysterious death of an informant in the Sergei Magnitsky case has created suspicion of a second high-profile Russian murder in the UK. Alexander Perepilichnyy - a 44-year-old Russian businessman with no known health ...

One year on from the Olympics, the eyes of the world will again be on the United Kingdom next summer, as we host the G8 at Lough Erne in Northern Ireland. Some people ask: does the G8 still matter, when we have a G20? ...

Member states should take decisions by majority voting, including in sensitive areas like taxation, instead of having a veto right capable of blocking attempts to harmonise rules across the EU, justice commissioner ...

Greek magazine Hot Doc has published the names of 2,059 suspected tax evaders in a move likely to stoke social tension. The roll call of people who held accounts at the HSBC bank in Geneva includes Stavros Papastavros, ...

The EU commission on Tuesday (24 October) proposed that a group of 11 countries move ahead with a common financial transactions tax, after years of wrangling failed to produce a deal among all member states. Estonia ...

A threshold-breaking eleven member states have agreed to push ahead with a financial transactions tax but the political breakthrough is tempered by a number of unanswered questions. "Today we have received a clear and ...

Portugal's centre-right government unveiled across-the-board tax hikes on Wednesday (3 October) to ensure the country meets debt and deficit targets required under the terms of its bailout. Finance minister Vitor Gaspar ...

Marc Goldbrenner, a top salesman at Lecobel, a real estate agent in the Belgian and EU capital, says he has two or three meetings a week with French "fiscal exiles" keen to flee President Francois Hollande's new rich ...

A fresh report on tax fraud by the European Commission makes several EU countries look like villains in the €1-trillion-a-year racket. Taxation commissioner Algirdas Semeta put forward the findings in Brussels on ...

Greece's left-wing Syriza party will not get any help from EU institutions in its bid to make ship owners pay more tax. George Stathakis, a recently elected Syriza MP and an economics professor at the University of ...

Finance ministers on Friday (22 June) officially declared dead a proposal for an EU-wide financial transactions tax (FTT), opening the way for at least nine countries to press ahead with the levy. "We can note that the ...

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has said member states must agree to a big common budget, a future banking union and - ultimately - political union in order to save the EU. His speech at the European ...

MEPs on the recently established anti-mafia committee and the European Commission have revived talk of creating an EU public prosecutor's office. Slovenian social democrat MEP Tanja Fajon - among others - proposed the ...

"Completely unjustifiable ... grossly unfair ... a mystery" - the European Commission and the Danish EU presidency have given Austria and Luxembourg a tongue-lashing for protecting tax evaders. The harsh words came ...

Almost half of Irish people have refused to pay a household tax imposed as part of promised savings measures, while government pressure to secure the levy risks further angering an austerity-weary public. By a Saturday ...

Finance ministers are exploring alternatives to an EU-wide financial transactions tax (FTT), with a new German proposal attracting interest from FTT refusenik Sweden. "Colleagues have aired ideas of an activity tax. ...

The citizens' initiative - a participative democracy tool coming into effect at the end of this week - could be used to pressure EU politicians into accepting a financial transactions tax (FTT), the European Parliament ...

Member states will pay 50 percent less into the general EU budget by 2020 if they agree to implement a financial transactions tax (FTT), the EU commission said Thursday (22 March). In a last-ditch attempt to undermine ...

Tax evasion remains among the greatest challenges for experts tasked with helping Greece with administrative reform. A second assessment report by a European Commission team meant to assist Athens with internal change ...

Member states remain thoroughly divided on the merits of a financial transactions tax (FTT) following a discussion on Tuesday (13 March). A small group forging ahead with the plan is not an automatic process either. ...

Member states should "refrain" from bilateral deals on taxing Swiss bank accounts held by their nationals, EU taxation commissioner Algirdas Semeta on Monday (5 March) wrote in a letter to the Danish EU presidency. The ...

Efforts to secure a deal on private sector involvement in a debt swap and reduction for Greece will take centre stage this week as one of the last pieces of the complicated jigsaw puzzle to nail down a second bailout ...

Greece needs to cut down on expenditure and make deep reforms, according to German/Greek economist Janis Emmanouilidis from the European Policy Centre. But Yiorgos Vassalos, a Greek expat and a member of the Greek ...