The House of Representatives was consumed for much of the week on the vexing matter of whether Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs had been subject to an “offer” of an actual “job” by the government or had merely been party to “discussions” over a new “role”. As the business… – Continue reading
BANCO DEAR: NZ Superannuation Fund was joined with finance high-fliers in the loan to collapsed Portuguese bank. An Indian billionaire and a hedge fund run by former Goldman Sachs executives were among coinvestors with the Super Fund in a $1 billion loan to shaky Portuguese bank Banco Espirito Santo. The… – Continue reading
Feb 26 (Reuters) – Israel’s banking regulator has demanded that two of Israel’s largest banks set aside money to settle possible U.S. tax evasion investigations, Army Radio reported on Thursday. Citing an unnamed source, the radio said the request was made to Hapoalim, Israel’s largest bank, and Mizrahi Tefahot, the… – Continue reading
KPMG in India through its survey, has tried to understand the expectations of India Inc. on various parameters such as policy reforms, clarity on indirect transfer tax provisions, applicability of MAT on foreign companies, amendment in the tax regime for REITs/ InvITs, deductions allowed to individuals, etc. Over 200 senior… – Continue reading
Bank’s subsidiary in Switzerland is already being investigated by US authorities about whether it helped Americans evade tax The venerable Coutts bank, home of the Queen’s personal accounts, has been drawn into the mounting controversy about private banking with an admission that its Swiss arm is under investigation for aiding… – Continue reading
Minister of Finance Alexander Chikwanda has told parliament that that only two mining companies were paying Company Income Tax under the previous tax regime as most of them claimed that they were not in tax-paying positions. In a Ministerial Statement on the 2015 Mining Taxation Regime Presented to the National… – Continue reading
Profits outside US exceed non-US sales for company selling $1,000 a pill HepC therapy Gilead Science, whose $1,000-a-pill hepatitis C treatment is one of the world’s most expensive drugs, is avoiding billions of dollars in US taxes by booking profits overseas. The company, which has operations in Ireland, reported foreign… – Continue reading
Last week, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced it would investigate claims that HSBC had helped wealthy clients avoid paying millions of pounds worth of tax. The financial watchdog revealed it was cooperating closely with the firm and other agencies involved in the matter, and would focus on issues relating… – Continue reading
[NEW YORK] Citigroup Inc said additional government authorities have started probes of possible breaches of anti-money laundering laws at its Banamex USA unit. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a unit of the US Treasury, and the California Department of Business Oversight have asked the company for information on its compliance… – Continue reading
Tax structure allowed McDonald’s to divert revenue for years, costing European countries over €1 billion in lost taxes between 2009 and 2013. Today in Brussels, a coalition of European and American trade unions, joined by the anti-poverty campaign group War on Want, unveiled a report about McDonald’s deliberate avoidance of… – Continue reading
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will be given more substantial access to details of international bank accounts from next year as the tax authority steps up its efforts to crack down on offshore tax evasion. HMRC will receive information of overseas bank accounts held by UK taxpayers as part of… – Continue reading
Margaret Hodge, chair of parliament’s public spending watchdog, criticises corporation for sale to consortium whose structure was designed to avoid tax The BBC has been criticised by the chair of the parliamentary public spending watchdog for the “shocking” sale of Television Centre in west London to a consortium that she… – Continue reading
Goldman Sachs’s latest financial report shows that the company avoided paying federal income taxes on almost half its United States profits in 2014. In fact, the company paid an effective tax rate of just 18.6 percent on $6.8 billion in U.S. profits. Most of Goldman’s low tax rate (about half… – Continue reading
Disclosure in bank’s annual results about Coutts comes as it reports seventh consecutive loss Royal Bank of Scotland was dragged into the Swiss tax evasion scandal on Thursday when it emerged that the taxpayer-owned company’s private bank is under investigation for helping wealthy clients evade tax. The small print of… – Continue reading
First there was money laundering, then foreign-exchange rigging and now tax evasion. Politicians and analysts are asking if big banks became too big to manage from being too large to be allowed to fail HSBC Europe’s biggest bank, has endured a string of scandals and paid millions in penalties to… – Continue reading
The Bombay High Court, in its landmark judgments in the cases of Vodafone India and Shell India, held that issue of shares, being a capital transaction, does not attract transfer pricing (TP) provisions under the Indian income tax law. The court observed that investment in shares does not fall within… – Continue reading
Tax avoidance is commonplace amongst “even the most respectable families”, according to North East Somerset MP Jacob Rees- Mogg. Speaking in debate on the HSBC tax row in the Commons yesterday (23/02) Mr Rees- Mogg said, “Doesn’t this question itself show the danger of alliding tax avoidance and tax evasion?… – Continue reading
Not long after the U.S. Department of Justice’s Tax Division (“DOJ”) made international headlines in 2009 for its bombshell announcement that it had entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS), lawmakers in Washington, D.C. began reviewing the testimony of hundreds of UBS’s U.S. clients… – Continue reading
PARIS: The heir to the Nina Ricci perfume fortune went on trial for hiding €18.7 million (£13.9 million) from French authorities in what is seen as a test case concerning the HSBC tax avoidance scandal. Arlette Ricci, 74, is among the first of around 50 wealthy French nationals to face… – Continue reading
The government has been able to instil a positive sentiment in the country. Various policy initiatives like Make-in-India, aimed to make India a manufacturing hub, and the Clean India campaign; updating age-old laws and tweaking the Goods and Services Tax to a more acceptable form, introducing greater clarity in the… – Continue reading
BRUSSELS, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) — Member states need to pay more heed to coordinating their efforts in corporate taxation to combat tax evasion, said economic and financial affairs commissioner Pierre Moscovici on Monday. Moscovici said the European Commission (EC) had actively supported European member states in their efforts to secure… – Continue reading
Although the importance to Africa’s diaspora is largely discussed around remittances, many Africans are also coming back to join the public service. SOMALIA’S parliament just approved a new parliament, a crucial step on the road to voting on a new constitution and presidential elections scheduled for 2016. A key role… – Continue reading
São Paulo, Brazil. International transfer pricing is able to take place in Brazil, outside of the OECD While Brazil is not a member of the OECD, many multinational groups there are able to successfully navigate international transfer pricing standards, yielding effective results The economic view of Brazil has always been… – Continue reading
BELIZE CITY, Mon. Feb. 23, 2015–It’s far easier to move money from Belize via an offshore company than to deposit those funds in a local commercial bank, especially with more stringent banking requirements which have been implemented as part of the new anti-money laundering regime here in Belize. If a… – Continue reading
The issue of whether Israeli banks should take the Swiss approach and refuse to disclose customer identities may be a moot point, in light of a new international anti-tax-evasion treaty that is taking shape. There is a direct line connecting the disclosure of the identities of 6,200 Israelis with Swiss… – Continue reading
Attempt to plug every gap makes the system unworkable – Norton Rose Fulbright. JOHANNESBURG – A tax expert has warned against over-complicating tax legislation in an attempt to block every loophole or perceived underpayments of tax, as it makes the tax system “unworkable”. Andrew Wellsted, director at Norton Rose Fulbright,… – Continue reading
(Bloomberg) — Argentine tax authorities said Sunday they are seeking the arrest of money manager Miguel Abadi for alleged involvement in an offshore investment network designed to avoid paying taxes. The agency, in a statement, said it’s seeking information from tax agencies in the Virgin Islands, Uruguay and Bermuda about… – Continue reading
The spotlight is firmly on tax reduction among large global firms operating in the UK – but is the practice putting smaller domestic companies on the back foot? The HSBC tax scandal, wilfully fuelled by politicians looking to appear tough on what they call immoral tax practices, has put the… – Continue reading
Antoine Deltour sees himself as “just a little auditor” who copied some tax files. Now he may face jail after those documents helped send a shock wave through Luxembourg that is reverberating across the European Union. (Bloomberg) — Antoine Deltour sees himself as “just a little auditor” who copied some… – Continue reading
(Bloomberg) — HSBC Holdings Plc, struggling to contain a political storm over the bank’s facilitation of tax evasion through its Swiss unit, said Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver paid taxes after setting up his own Swiss account and keeping his legal residence in Hong Kong. The bank, reacting to an… – Continue reading
A former Director of Public Prosecutions has accused banking giant HSBC of “grave” cross border crime and of engaging in “a systematic and profitable collusion in serious criminal activity” in the UK. According to the Independent, in a damming intervention Lord Ken Macdonald, who led the Crown Prosecution Service until… – Continue reading
According to Peter Willey, EY’s Channel Islands Head of Tax, the Channel Islands are likely to be impacted by decisions being made now in other jurisdictions. EY recently surveyed its tax policy leaders in 32 jurisdictions to ask them to forecast the tax policy outlook for 2015 in their jurisdiction…. – Continue reading
The Treasury Department’s crackdown on tax inversions last year has slowed but not stopped the movement of U.S. headquarters abroad as American businesses try to reduce tax bills and foreign firms seek to grow. Indeed, with U.S. companies now virtually barred from relocating overseas in order to trim taxes, the… – Continue reading
(Bloomberg) — Swiss prosecutors are scrambling to explain why they took seven years to probe suspicions of money laundering aroused by data stolen from HSBC Holdings Plc’s private bank in Geneva. Inspired by Feb. 8 disclosures by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that HSBC did business with arms… – Continue reading
Feb 22 (Reuters) – A new criminal offence should be introduced to clamp down on tax evasion, a senior figure in Britain’s finance ministry said on Sunday in the wake of a scandal surrounding HSBC. Allegations that HSBC’s Swiss private bank helped clients evade tax has pushed the issue to… – Continue reading
Following the financial crisis, dividend yields from American banks have remained below the level many income investors are looking for. While all four major American banks yield less than 3%, U.S. investors can still get fat bank dividends by looking abroad. The United Kingdom London has long been a financial… – Continue reading
UK, US, Australia, Brazil, India- governments of developed and developing countries are battling profit shifting by MNCs such as Amazon, Google, Apple and Starbucks. The allegation- MNCs are shifting profits to jurisdictions where there is little or no tax to be paid. The solution- OECD’s BEPS action plan which, among… – Continue reading
Certainty and reduced litigation on transfer pricing (TP) issues will be the cornerstone of creating a non-adversarial tax regime in India. The authors believe that Budget 2015 ought to lay out a roadmap to achieve this goal for TP issues – Recent positive progress on the Advance Pricing Agreement (APA)… – Continue reading
Mental health charities and senior journalists took to social media to urge newspapers to think carefully about how they report suicides, after the Daily Telegraph published a story concerning the death of two employees at News UK, the publisher of the Times and the Sun. On Twitter and various online… – Continue reading
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Thursday reiterated its allegations of money laundering against Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, saying he has transferred $4 million to his son in Dubai to avoid taxes. “The biggest investor in this case is our very own Finance Minister Ishaq Dar. He has on record… – Continue reading
Chancellor says the allegations are very serious but that such decisions are a matter for the prosecuting authorities George Osborne has washed his hands of responsibility for prosecutions against people who evaded tax through HSBC Switzerland, as the government came under pressure to justify immunity deals given to those who… – Continue reading
The Business Council of Australia says that the Tax Office is holding company directors and management to account about their tax affairs, despite there only being one company in the nation with a top risk rating. “There is ongoing [Australian Taxation Office] scrutiny of corporate boards,” the BCA said in… – Continue reading
Labour took £386,000 from PricewaterhouseCoopers in last quarter of 2014 Accountancy company accused of helping clients slash tax bills Former Labour minister says it was ‘inappropriate’ to accept donation Ed had said donors accused of tax avoidance not allowed on his watch Labour was accused of hypocrisy last night as… – Continue reading
Caterpillar, Inc. (CAT), the heavy equipment maker is now under scrutiny as the IRS now demands $1 billion in taxes and penalties. This should come as no shock after the company faced Senate scrutiny in 2014 over its tax plans. Tax Woes The company deals in the designing, manufacturing and… – Continue reading
Under-fire banking giant HSBC will next week report profits of nearly £15billion – or a staggering £40million a day. The group is expected to post annual results for 2014 in line with the previous year when it updates investors on Monday. But the bumper figures are likely to be overshadowed… – Continue reading
It’s been tough for investors in the U.S. to get much income from their portfolios from traditional sources like fixed-income investments, and so dividend stocks have gotten a lot more popular in recent years. Although there are thousands of U.S. stocks that pay dividends, many international companies also have lucrative… – Continue reading
Leaks published last week by an international collaboration of journalists revealed how Canary Wharf-based, British bank, HSBC – one of the largest banks in the world – helped wealthy clients evade hundreds of millions of pounds worth of tax. David Leigh, one of the journalists who worked on the investigation… – Continue reading
WHEN the GAAR rule was launched it was one of the government’s first and biggest moves in its battle against tax avoidance, but since its introduction in 2013 the body tasked with enforcing the rule has been distinctly quiet despite claims that companies and their accountants are perpetrating tax avoidance… – Continue reading
The Government of India brought in a retrospective amendment in 2012 to nullify the Supreme Court judgement in the case of Vodafone International Holdings B.V. to tax capital gains arising from transfer of shares or interest in a foreign company deriving its value ‘substantially’ from Indian assets. However, the Government… – Continue reading
Iran is losing between $12-20 billion a year through tax avoidance and evasion, head of the State Tax Organization Ali Askari says. The loses are equivalent to 20% to 25% of the country’s gross domestic product revenue, he said in comments published in the daily T’aadol. The official says the… – Continue reading
