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These potentially harmful practices are due to be eliminated by April 2003. Some doubts were expressed yesterday about whether or not the Swiss would co-operate fully. But other officials were privately confident that Switzerland and Luxembourg would continue to co-operate on tax matters and that the tide had also turned against extreme banking secrecy.Mr Makhlouf said: “Harmful tax competition undermines the ability of democratically elected governments to provide the services voted for by their citizens, undermines the integrity of tax systems and causes an undesired shift of part of the tax burden from geographically mobile to less mobile tax bases.”The aim was not so much to boost tax revenues as to end economic distortions, he said. Indeed, he refused to put a figure to the revenue lost through the use of tax havens, although it is likely to be in the hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars worldwide. There was no intention of harmonising taxes or setting minimum tax rates, he insisted. However, globalisation meant countries had to co-ordinate their regimes. “Liberalisation and new technologies have opened an enormous potential …

but at the same time have opened up new avenues for instability, regulatory and tax avoidance and crime.”Yesterday’s agreement signalled the determination of the OECD’s governments to close those avenues. Centres left on the list in July 2001 will have to resign themselves to the status of tax pariahs.. With all those deep-pocketed dot start-ups eager to persuade us to remember their names you’d be forgiven for thinking adland has never had it so good You’d be wrong. True, the so-called “digital revolution” has created new advertisers, but the challenges it also presents are fundamental.

Such as what exactly “advertising” in the 21st century should be. With all those deep-pocketed dot start-ups eager to persuade us to remember their names you’d be forgiven for thinking adland has never had it so good You’d be wrong. True, the so-called “digital revolution” has created new advertisers, but the challenges it also presents are fundamental. Such as what exactly “advertising” in the 21st century should be.
The question cuts to the heart of the advertising business’ raison d’être.