Australia should consider adopting tax structures like those used in Ireland and Luxembourg in order to attract greater foreign investment, the government’s tax advisory body has recommended. On Thursday night, Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg released several reports by the Board of Tax, which advises the government on how to reform… – Continue reading
A paper production line of SAScoat Viet Nam. The company is suspected of engaging in transfer pricing. HA NOI (Biz Hub) — The Debt and Asset Trading Corporation (DATC) has asked the General Department of Taxation to investigate SAScoat Viet Nam for transfer pricing, online newspaper Investment said. The request… – Continue reading
Tax doesn’t have to be taxing for US firm with inside track Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is the first major department to move to Google Apps, part of an apparent loosening of Microsoft’s stranglehold on the government’s software services. The department will join the Cabinet Office and Department… – Continue reading
June 5: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) yesterday released a discussion draft concerning work in relation to Action 8 under the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project concerning hard-to-value intangibles. Read the BEPS Action 8 discussion draft [PDF 62 KB] The following discussion provides initial impressions… – Continue reading
Medtronic is on the lookout for early-stage technologies developed by medical device firms in the United States, as well as larger acquisitions that can help the company implement a three-pronged strategy, in the wake of its $43 billion merger with Covidien. The tax inversion deal allowed Medtronic to relocate to… – Continue reading
Benjamin Fuchs is unfazed by being caught in the first dollar bond default of a Chinese developer. The chief investment officer of BFAM Partners (Hong Kong), a hedge-fund firm overseeing $1.2 billion of assets, said offshore debt of Chinese property developers with a single-B credit rating was “extremely cheap” and… – Continue reading
In a note to investors published today, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi weighed in on why Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has chosen to keep a large offshore cash balance and not repatriate to the US. Mr. Sacconaghi noted activist investor Carl Icahn’s notion that Apple’s real tax rate is roughly 20% below… – Continue reading
Microsoft Corp. and the IRS are back in court, this time fighting about the U.S. tax agency’s interest in hiring David Boies, the lawyer who beat Microsoft in an antitrust case in 2000. The software company filed a federal lawsuit May 29 in Seattle, marking the latest legal flurry over… – Continue reading
On Thursday, May 28, 2015, the Department of Justice announced that pursuant to its August 29, 2013 Swiss Bank Program, it had reached settlement with four additional Swiss banks. The newest banks to settle, Société Générale Private Banking (Lugano-Svizzera), MediBank AG, LBBW (Schweiz) AG, and Scobag Privatbank AG, will pay… – Continue reading
Medtronic PLC reported a net loss of $1 million in its first combined quarter with Covidien, largely related to $ 880 million in charges for the Covidien acquisition and a $329 million expense from the resolution of a tax dispute with the Internal Revenue Service. The medical-device maker said healthy… – Continue reading
A full and fascinating roundtable discussion based around the island’s place as an international finance centre was held at KPMG’s headquarters in Athol Street, Douglas. Around the table were David Karran, managing director, IQE, Simon Scott, managing director, Barclays Isle of Man, Andrew Thomas, chief executive, Isle of Man Enterprises… – Continue reading
The five biggest suppliers of publicly subsidised medicines in Australia recorded sales of nearly $5 billion last year but paid an average of just $10 million each in company tax. Research by the Parliamentary Library, obtained by Fairfax Media, has disclosed the tax contribution of multinational pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer… – Continue reading
The Government will be unable to fund the basic services that Australians want if it fails to achieve major tax reform, PwC has said, reports Tax News. PwC has released its submission on the Government’s Tax Reform White Paper process. Tom Seymour, Managing Partner Tax and Legal, said: “Successful tax… – Continue reading
Last week, the Justice Department announced that it had reached resolutions with four more Swiss banks under the terms of the DOJ Swiss Bank Program. The latest banks to resolve their U.S. tax issues are the following: Société Générale Private Banking (Lugano-Svizzera); MediBank AG; LBBW (Schweiz) AG; and Scobag Privatbank… – Continue reading
■ Barclays and HSBC have been named in legal papers filed in the US ■ Documents have also named London-based Standard Chartered Bank ■ Allegedly moved suspect transactions linked to Fifa through their accounts ■ Britain’s Serious Fraud Office is understood to be monitoring situation Two of Britain’s biggest High… – Continue reading
A South Florida man who ran a $15 million pill mill operation that sold hundreds of thousands of addictive painkillers to drug dealers and addicts was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in federal prison. Joel Shumrak, 67, of Boca Raton, has been locked up since June when federal agents raided… – Continue reading
Half the 30 such cases, worth Rs 10,000 crore, to be addressed India is set to sign agreements with Japan to resolve as many as 15 transfer pricing disputes. These agreements follow the one recently signed with the US. The agreements will be for cases that fall in the ambit… – Continue reading
Research shows corporation tax receipts from banks are lower than before crisis despite global tax payments staying constant Britain’s banks are paying far less in corporation tax to the Exchequer than before the crisis, despite their profits improving and global tax payments staying constant. Research from Cambridge Judge Business School… – Continue reading
K+, a television joint venture between Vietnam and France, well-known as the exclusive broadcaster of the British Premier League in Vietnam, has reported an accumulative loss of VND1.9 trillion after five years of operation. Since 2009, when it made its debut, K+, the television corporation to which the French Canal+… – Continue reading
Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey should not be ruling out particular aspects of the tax system that could be reformed, such as GST, superannuation concessions and negative gearing, KPMG’s chairman Peter Nash says. Mr Nash said when the tax white paper was first announced by the Coalition… – Continue reading
The company decided to declare its revenues since European regulators started to investigate its accounting practices. Internet retailer Amazon paid about US$16 million to Germany in 2014, while the giant multinational recorded a total earning of US$16 billion in that country, according to the country’s regulators. In the past, the… – Continue reading
“It is absolute nonsense,” News Corp Australia boss Julian Clarke told the Senate Inquiry into Corporate Tax Avoidance last month, when asked if News had paid a rate of just 4.8 per cent in income tax on its $6.8 billion in operating cashflows in this country. The question was based… – Continue reading
It has become a $2 trillion question. Why don’t companies have to make clear exactly how much of their profits are generated offshore each year and not taxed in this country? Why must investors engage in jujitsu to estimate these figures and the risks associated with them? Companies, like individuals,… – Continue reading
DOUBTS have been raised about whether planned new laws will be powerful enough to rake in billions of offshore tax dollars from multi-national companies. TREASURER Joe Hockey has promised to stop companies using complex schemes to escape paying tax, but University of Sydney academic Anthony Ting says a close look… – Continue reading
International fast-food giant McDonald’s avoided paying half a billion dollars of tax in Australia over a five-year period by shifting profits through the low-tax nation of Singapore, a new report by a global coalition of trade unions says. The report, which has been funded and commissioned by a coalition of… – Continue reading
As part of a push to control money laundering in the global banking system, the HKMA has called on lenders to peek into customers’ filings, reports the South China Morning Post. Banks in Hong Kong are calculating just how much tax expertise they will need to add over the coming… – Continue reading
The advantages of off-shore investments Two of the top reasons that South African investors are given to encourage offshore investments are that going offshore diversifies your portfolio and that it gives you access to sectors you could never find on the resource-heavy JSE. “While those are not reasons to be… – Continue reading
Accountants are wondering whether the New Zealand government will move to tax millions of small parcels and services bought offshore in the May 21 budget, including digital downloads. Australia acted on the issue in its budget a few days ago. New Zealand Customs does not collect goods and services tax… – Continue reading
The I-T dept has received over 500 applications from MNCs for signing APAs. Income-tax department has set a target of 50 advance pricing agreements (APAs) to be sealed with multinational companies in the current fiscal that will exempt cross-border transactions by these firms from rigorous auditing to check income suppression…. – Continue reading
Luxembourg has been a prime destination for Canadians looking for a tax haven. Secretive. Discreet. Accommodating. These features were so attractive that Canadian companies, including a federal pension fund, sent $36 billion there in 2013. But new Statistics Canada data shows that more than $5 billion got pulled out of… – Continue reading
The big miners were sprung for their Singapore profits sling, and the United States tech giants shown up for their Byzantine tax structures, but there was little time left to spend on other sectors where multinational tax chicanery was rife. When the Senate Inquiry into Corporate Tax Avoidance reconvened to… – Continue reading
Even as the action plan to address Base Erosion and Profit Sharing (BEPS) is being worked out, multinationals are bracing for some turbulent times in India. For some time now, transfer pricing – the price of goods and services determined by a company when two of its subsidiaries transact –… – Continue reading
May 13 — The hiring of an outside law firm in a sharply contested audit of Microsoft’s transfer pricing “appears to violate federal law and the express will of the Congress,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said in a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. Hatch, in… – Continue reading
BANKS are unable to directly recover the huge sums of money stolen from their customers via online transactions if the cash is stashed in offshore accounts, its association said yesterday. The Kenya Bankers Association chief executive officer Habil Olaka said most countries like Mauritius or Switzerland where fraudsters hide the… – Continue reading
Grant Wardell-Johnson, KPMG Tax Partner, has said that while it would have been better for Australia to await the outcome of the OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting Action Plan, the international tax measures proposed recently by Treasurer Joe Hockey “have the benefit of being highly targeted.” On May 11,… – Continue reading
Australia to fine tech tax-dodgers 100% of their avoided tax, plus profits Australia’s treasurer* Joe Hockey has revealed that he and other money ministers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have shared plans to have online retailers charging the appropriate consumption tax on intangibles and goods bought… – Continue reading
KPMG in Saudi Arabia is hosting a seminar on taxation of US individuals and the impact of Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) at the Marriott Hotel in Riyadh on May 26. Under US tax law, US citizens and US permanent residents (green card holders) are required to file US… – Continue reading
(Bloomberg) — Monsanto Co.’s potential acquisition of rival agricultural-chemical maker Syngenta AG could be structured as a tax inversion under current U.S. rules despite political resistance to such deals, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence. Switzerland’s Syngenta last week rejected St. Louis-based Monsanto’s $45 billion takeover offer. Monsanto, the… – Continue reading
The Australian government announced a world-leading crackdown on Monday on alleged tax avoidance by 30 multinational companies that will likely force them to restructure their businesses before next year, reports Reuters. “These companies are diverting profits earned in Australia away from Australia to no-tax or low-tax jurisdictions,” Treasurer Joe Hockey… – Continue reading
Lexmark International Inc. considered moving its headquarters overseas to save money on taxes earlier this year, according to chief financial officer David Reeder. But the printing company decided to stay in its Lexington, Ky. home, after spending the bulk of its offshore cash to buy software developer Kofax Ltd.s
Analysts at the accountancy firm found that the UK system was even more intricate than the equivalent structure in France The British property tax system is now the most “complex” in the world, endangering London’s reputation as an investment haven, according to new analysis from accountancy firm PwC. Research showed… – Continue reading
Corporations that have reclassified themselves as “foreign-owned” received approximately $1 billion in federal contracts over the last five years. These companies profit from American tax dollars despite avoiding U.S. taxes themselves. That could soon change. Two members of Congress have reintroduced legislation that would block these companies from winning lucrative… – Continue reading
VietNamNet Bridge – How to deal with transfer pricing – whether to view it as an inevitable part of foreign direct investment (FDI) or take drastic measures to stop it – remains a controversial matter among Vietnamese. METRO Cash & Carry Vietnam (MCC) will have to pay VND507 billion (US$23.8… – Continue reading
Danish jewelry maker Pandora will pay 995 million Danish crowns ($151 million) to the Danish tax authorities, Skat, in a settlement after a transfer pricing audit for 2009 to 2014, it said on Thursday. Pandora also said its reported tax rate for 2015 is expected to be around 22 pct… – Continue reading
The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat is warning a major U.S. agriculture company to think twice about moving its legal address offshore. Minority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) told Monsanto that it’s in the company’s best interest to remain headquartered in the U.S., and noted that the company has had no problems… – Continue reading
State-backed bank Lloyds has sold offshore life insurer Clerical Medical to investment manager RL360 for an undisclosed sum, Lloyds and RL360 said on Thursday. Clerical Medical’s policies were closed to new business in March 2012. The firm is estimated to have a value of 200 million pounds. “The sale reflects… – Continue reading
Cracking down on sweetheart tax deals with multinational corporations is proving more difficult than the European Commission had anticipated. Delays, uncooperative member states, and missed deadlines are among the frustrations highlighted Tuesday (5 May) by the EU’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager. Speaking at a special committee on tax rulings at… – Continue reading
VietNamNet Bridge – Metro Cash & Carry Vietnam, the German invested retailer, which repeatedly reported losses over the last 12 years in Vietnam, has engaged in transfer pricing to evade tax, according to the General Department of Taxation (GDT). It has asked the big retailer to reduce the reported loss… – Continue reading
US fast-food giant McDonald’s could be facing a European Commission (EU) investigation into its tax affairs. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said she is looking into trade union allegations that the restaurant chain avoided paying more than €1bn (£658m; $1.1bn) in corporate taxes between 2009 and 2013. Unions claim McDonald’s… – Continue reading
BRUSSELS–The European Union won’t meet a self-imposed June deadline for deciding whether four multinational companies including Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. benefited from illegal tax sweeteners, the bloc’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said Tuesday. “We won’t meet the deadline we set ourselves [of] the end of the second quarter,” Ms…. – Continue reading
