This week’s The Economist magazine carried an interesting editorial regarding whether the tax dues of politicians and/or citizens should be published. Some experts in taxation are making this proposal in order to promote transparency. Scandinavian countries are already implementing it.

Actually, there’s a curious fact that seems to have been overlooked: in the eighties of the previous century, the measure was introduced by the Labour government of the day (even as it was being daily accused of a thousand sins against good governance, many of which were in truth, manipulations).

The then Nationalist Opposition was totally against the measure. It criticized the publication of citizens’ tax liabilities as a form of espionage. Meanwhile, it was busy organizing street by street, all over the island, a network of informants, tasked with reporting about the political behaviour of their neighbours.

Every year, the government would publish a fat book containing the sums due in income tax from everybody. With the technology of those days, it was a complicated and burdensome procedure. It found people eager to help make it more burdensome and complicated.

The annual publication of the report lost steam. When post 1987, there was a change of government, the project was halted altogether.

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Lux Leaks vs Panama

A discussion arose in the European Parliament regarding how to carry out the investigation into the Panama papers scandal that everybody agreed must be launched.

Should it be a stand alone and separate investigation? Or should it be linked to the longer standing process triggered in the wake of the Luxleaks scandal, by carrying over to the committee which is addressing Luxleaks issues, a similar mandate for the Panama papers?

Naturally, the parliamentary aspirations of members of a committee who would wish to widen the area of their responsibility came into play. But this is a secondary consideration.

Of greater relevance is that fact that while Luxleaks focussed on the “large” multinational companies, the Panama papers mainly covered people with power, influence or money, or the three together. The issues raised are hardly the same. The European Commission did propose to bring them closer by further decreasing the lower bound of a company’s sales that would require it to satisfy the measures the Commission has proposed to counter the abuses revealed by Luxleaks.

This is certaily not enough. The strategies adopted by elites to salt away their funds are completely different to those followed by multinationals big and small, as they seek to evade taxes due.

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The sorrows of Europe

With time, the divide is growing wider between developments in Brussels regarding the European Union, and the way how public opinion is shaping up among national electorates. The sorrows of Europe seem to be spreading if successive election results from Poland to Portugal, or if you like, to the Dutch referendum, are taken into account.

Following each result, discussions are held in Brussels about the “shock” caused by the most recent result and “populism” is duly condemned. Then everybody continues with what was being said and done before this happened. It’s business as usual.

All express their greatest hope: that Brexit gets rejected.