Drug smugglers and third-world dictators laundering ill-gotten wealth through secretive banking systems in tax havens is an anachronistic image from crime novels. Leveraging US' remarkable success in compelling tax havens to block terrorist financing, the G20/OECD have successfully persuaded tax havens to improve tax transparency and participate in an international regime of information exchange.  All tax havens have committed to OECD standards for tax transparency and are executing Tax Information Exchange...

With the Nitish-led NDA government firmly in the saddle in the state, with not even an iota of political instability, world powers have started taking keen interest in Bihar's progress and exploring opportunities for possible investment. In the past less than 12 hours, highly-placed representatives of the US and the UK called on the chief minister and praised him for the positive developments in the state. US undersecretary of state for political...

-The Indian Express India is among the lowest scoring countries on political finance regulation, according to a new report. Global Integrity Report for 2011 released on Friday, indicates that developing as well as developed countries, including the US, are equally struggling to effectively implement money-in-politics rules. Global Integrity is an international non-profit organisation which tracks governance and corruption trends in the world. The Election Commission in India has instituted measures to create enhanced transparency...

One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...

-The Economist   Nuclear power will not go away, but its role may never be more than marginal, says Oliver Morton THE LIGHTS ARE not going off all over Japan, but the nuclear power plants are. Of the 54 reactors in those plants, with a combined capacity of 47.5 gigawatts (GW, a thousand megawatts), only two are operating today. A good dozen are unlikely ever to reopen: six at Fukushima Dai-ichi, which suffered...