How tax transparency can shape fairer financial systems
This week, NoCeT hosted the Conference on Tax Transparency, a gathering of international experts, policymakers, and industry leaders to tackle the global challenge of tax avoidance and evasion.
The discussions centered around how tax transparency can shape fairer financial systems, support governments, and align with the broader environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agendas.
Global challenge
`Tax avoidance and evasion represent a pressing global challenge, depriving governments and societies of the essential revenues required to fund public services and infrastructure, said Elisa Casi-Eberhard.
Casi-Eberhard is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Business and Management Science and Norwegian Centre for Taxation, NoCeT.
`Tax transparency has become a pivotal policy tool in the fight against these issues, as highlighted by the OECD. By shedding light on financial practices, transparency initiatives are helping to close the gaps that enable avoidance and evasion´.
All stakeholders
The conference had academics, policy makers, and leaders in joint discussions on tax transparency.
`I strongly believe that we need all relevant actors on board to have a fruitful and constructive discussion around such an important topic. I wanted to ensure that all stakeholders from industry and investors to governments, international institutions and academia could share their valuable insights and perspective on tax transparency´.
In recent decades, several tax transparency initiatives have been launched, Casi-Eberhard elaborates, and new frameworks are emerging. For example, the global reporting standards for crypto assets or the EU reporting duty on real time VAT transactions.
More tax information is needed
These developments have been driven by regulatory trends and pressure from stakeholders, such as the public and NGOs, which have also incentivized voluntary disclosure of tax affairs.
The Conference comittee
Elisa Casi-Eberhard organized the conference together with Arthur Stenzel (Associate Professor at the Department of Accounting, Auditing and Law), Costanza Cincotta (PhD student at the Department of Business and Management Science), Natalia Flórez Mejia (senior executive office at the Department of Business and Management Science) and, Mahdi Tarfiei Fathabad (NHH master student).
The conference was co-organized by NHH, NoCeT, TRR 266 Accounting for Transparency, and the Fair Tax Foundation, sponsored by NHH, Centre for Ethics and Economics, SNF and Finansmarkedsfondet.
`More tax information is needed, especially in real estate sector. It needs to be collected faster, with more real-time data and it needs to be of high quality. I think improvements are especially necessary in area of beneficial ownership information´.
But, as Casi-Eberhard concludes:
`We need a balance between creating an overcomplex and costly system for taxpayers and ensuring that all important information is collected from companies, individuals and intermediaries´.
