Maya Forstater

The revenue loss calculation is all kinds of shaky. According to GFI importers declaring overpriced imports evade corporate income tax but don't pay extra VAT or import tariffs. Importers declaring underpriced imports evade VAT & tariffs but don't get clobbered by higher CIT bill

Maybe the fraudsters are achieving this 'heads I win, tails you lose' outcome through clever means and dodgy accounting all along the chain, but its a lot of assumption to come up with the number.

Uncollected VAT on apparently underpriced imports is the biggest one. But unless the importers are the final consumer, or the products are going into the black market surely the VAT would be collected anyway down the line?

Why are GFI, the funder of this report @FordFoundation , the members of the transparency and accountability community @TAInitiative @FinTrCo all so willing to keep churning out these reports, and so uninterested in scrutinising and seriously considering their findings?

.... Unless the whole point of the methodology is to come up with big numbers. ..... because they can be used to argue for policies on transparency and accountability....

I like transparency and accountability. Its a good hypothesis and hope. The idea that if people have access to data about what their govt & other powerful organisations are doing they will hold them accountable. But it is a dynamic that has to be built by people & organisations

How can foundations contribute to that that if they are satisfied to keep funding the same organisations to produce the same reports, with the same lack of curiosity and scrutiny. ....."We need more transparency!" But don't look too closely at the analysis!