WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – Finter Bank Zurich AG has agreed to pay $5.4 million in a deal with the Justice Department to resolve tax-related offenses, becoming the third Swiss private bank this year to reach a settlement to avoid U.S. prosecution over helping Americans evade taxes. Finter, a small… – Continue reading
Westfield Corp looks to sever ties with Australia Westfield Corp’s pending move to list offshore would be positive as long as the stock was included in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, according to brokers. On Wednesday, at the group’s first annual general meeting after its restructure last year, Westfield’s… – Continue reading
FATCA—the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act—is America’s global tax law, called an American tax nightmare by the New York Times. That is an apt description. It was quietly enacted in 2010, and after a four-year ramp up, it’s finally in effect. Never before has an American tax law attempted such… – Continue reading
President Truong Tan Sang arrived at Heydar Aliyev international airport in Baku on May 13 afternoon for a three-day official visit to Azerbaijan. The President was welcomed at the airport by Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister Eyyubov Yaqub, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Khalaf Aly Oglu Khalafov, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Vietnam… – Continue reading
The worldwide transfer pricing landscape is in a state of flux and the need for sound and reliable dispute resolution mechanisms has never been more important for multinational enterprises. In particular, where aggressive tax administrations such as India are concerned, double taxation is a key concern for businesses. Mutual agreement… – Continue reading
Frank Lowy’s Westfield Corporation intends to take another step in cutting ties with Australia by shifting its head office overseas, once an offshore stock market listing is finalised. The company is entirely focused on shopping malls in the United States, Britain and Europe, with all Westfield-branded centres in Australia and… – Continue reading
Head of forum’s tax policy will push for reform to cut down on avoidance. The OECD has attacked the “extremely aggressive” tax planning of companies such as Google, Amazon and Apple as it pushes for reform of global tax rules to cut down on avoidance. Pascal Saint-Amans, who heads up… – 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
After a decade of “offshoring,” financial executives are making the decision to bring some work home. Cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore being replaced with more familiar names like Syracuse and Jacksonville as more companies bring finance jobs back to the states after a decade of “offshoring.” Mid-size U.S. cities are… – Continue reading
Glencore is under audit by the Australian Taxation Office for the low level of taxes it pays, claiming billions in “losses” overseas and resorting to low-tax or no-tax nations such as Bermuda, Singapore and the Cayman Islands. The Swiss-based mining giant revealed it was being investigated by the ATO in… – 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
Global business The European Union outlined its strategy to create a digital single market. The thrust of the proposals include establishing standard rules for buying goods online, pruning cross-border regulations on telecoms and reducing the tax burden on businesses. But the plan also calls for a “comprehensive assessment” of whether… – Continue reading
Banking multinational Standard Chartered’s renminbi Globalization Index (RGI) fell to 2,117 in March, down 1 percent from the previous month, the bank announced on Thursday. Renminbi-denominated cross-border Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) payment was the only positive contributor to the RGI in March. Foreign exchange turnover, offshore renminbi… – 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
Global giant Standard Chartered Bank has been allowed by regulator Sebi to offer advisory services on regulated offshore products like stocks, bonds and mutual funds in markets outside India. “… SCB can advise on regulated offshore securities and investment products, which are in the nature of marketable securities issued by… – 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
The total “development finance” loss – counting both revenues and reinvested earnings – is estimated in the range of $250 to $300 billion. This prevents developing countries from stopping the outflow of money, which thus bleeds them of essential resources The financial crisis of 2008 had an interesting collateral benefit… – Continue reading
FinCEN announced on Monday that it is fining Ripple Labs, Inc., the creator of XRP, for selling XRP without first registering as a money services business and failing to implement and maintain adequate anti-money laundering provisions. These violations fall under the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970. In a press release… – Continue reading
UK funds invested in India could face demands for tax from which they thought they were exempt. Minimum alternate tax (MAT), a tax on the book profit of a company, has been in existence in India in its current form since 2001 and is levied at 18.5 per cent. Because… – 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
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is set to take two banks to the Supreme Court over using alleged tax avoidance schemes to avoid paying big tax bills on bonuses for its staff. HMRC has previously lost two court cases against UBS and Deutsche Bank over the two schemes which operated… – 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
A federal judge demanded to know more about HSBC Holdings Plc’s compliance with its trade sanctions and anti-money-laundering deal with the U.S. after a monitor said the bank was “too slow” to mend its ways. U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, New York, ordered the government to file a… – Continue reading
Morgan Stanley veteran and former managing director Sridhar Sivaram told NDTV that the government’s decision to levy the contentious minimum alternative tax (MAT) retrospectively on foreign institutional investors (FII) for capital gains made during previous years, poses a hindrance to foreign fund flow into the country. “It’s very tough to… – Continue reading
Monsanto announced that it has resumed possible merger talks with Syngenta, a Swiss-based agricultural chemical giant. The pair explored a merger in early 2014 before deciding against it. When the 2014 talks were going on, one of the principle attractions for the deal was the possibility of Monsanto buying Syngenta… – Continue reading
Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS employee who helped bring down Swiss banking secrecy, has explained to Swiss public television SRF why he blew the whistle on the bank’s tax evasion violations in the United States. Birkenfeld claims he was pushed into the action by the discovery of an internal document… – Continue reading
Bradley Birkenfeld was released from federal prison in August 2012 after serving 2½ years for his role as a Swiss banker hiding millions of dollars for wealthy American clients. Five weeks later, he found himself in the kitchen of a small rental house in Raymond, New Hampshire. At that moment,… – Continue reading
Interpreting corporate tax data shouldn’t be like playing “Where’s Waldo.” Analysts seeking to understand whether big corporations are engaged in tax-avoidance hijinks should be aided, not thwarted, by the information that companies make available in their annual financial reports. A long-brewing effort to require country-by-country (CbC) reporting of corporate income… – Continue reading
FORMER treasurer Peter Costello says changing or ending tax credits for shareholders who get dividends would see investors send their money offshore. The financial system inquiry (FSI) last year questioned the wisdom of dividend imputations, where shareholders get a tax credit for the profits a firm shares with investors via… – Continue reading
Singapore is not a tax haven, it’s a value-adding hub. That is the claim of the island nation’s Economic Development Board, the Singaporean government agency that’s been charged with attracting business and investment. It has disputed recent claims at the Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance that it’s being used… – Continue reading
ZURICH: Switzerland’s money laundering office received a record number of suspicious activity reports last year, in part due to increased vigilance from Swiss banks. The Alpine nation has faced intense international pressure over bank secrecy, tax evasion and money laundering, most recently highlighted by allegations that the Swiss arm of… – Continue reading
India’s rupee rose for a second day as the dollar weakened and global funds resumed purchases of local bonds after the government sought to clear uncertainties over a retrospective tax on capital gains. Overseas funds bought a net $130 million of local-currency notes on April 24, the latest figures show,… – Continue reading
According to the most recent estimates, the quantity of goods carried by containers has risen from around 100 million metric tons in 1980 to about 1.5 billion metric tons in 2012. Out of these numbers, one container in every 11 that is engaged in global trade is either bound for… – Continue reading
Last September, the US Treasury Department announced new tax rules designed to crack down on the rising trend of “tax-inversion” deals in the pharmaceutical industry, as an increasing number of US firms had begun to pursue overseas acquisitions in attempts to relocate their legal addresses to non-US based headquarters to… – Continue reading
Can you trust a company to run a clean and profitable coal mine when its financial controller has a case of the vagues? If the testimony of Adani executives in the witness box in the past few days is any indication, the prospects for Australia’s biggest coal project are not… – Continue reading
LONDON (Reuters) – HSBC shares have rallied after the bank said it was reviewing whether to move its headquarters out of Britain and potentially back to its former home in Hong Kong. The following are some of the regulatory issues raised if Europe’s biggest bank were to relocate to Hong… – Continue reading
BHP Billiton is contesting A$522 million (S$544.8 million) in Australian tax bills on its Singapore marketing operations up to 2010, after having paid almost no tax in Singapore since 2006, the global miner told an Australian Senate panel, reports the Business Times. The figures were released on Monday by a… – Continue reading
TOKYO — Two of the world’s largest manufacturers of the machinery used to produce semiconductors, Applied Materials of the United States and Tokyo Electron of Japan, on Monday dropped plans to merge after the Department of Justice said that combining their businesses would restrict competition. The proposed $10 billion deal… – Continue reading
When Burger King’s owners first announced last summer’s mega-deal to gobble up Tim Hortons, the fast-food firm’s executives downplayed a key reason why they were acquiring the Canadian coffee chain and relocating corporate HQ to Canada: to cut its taxes. “Tax wasn’t really the driver of this,” Daniel Schwartz, the… – Continue reading
Mumbai, April 25 (IANS): The capital gains tax claims on foreign funds with retrospective effect and worries over similar notices ahead hit the marked mood during the week ended Friday, sending a key index down to its lowest level in three-and-a-half months. The mixed corporate results for the last quarter… – Continue reading
FPIs are battling it out with the income-tax department, which has issued notices demanding that they pay MAT to the tune of Rs40,000 crore New Delhi/Mumbai: Despite the government affirming that foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) can use tax treaties to fight tax demands on past capital gains, a majority of… – Continue reading
On March 30, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had entered into a nonprosecution agreement with BSI SA, the first Swiss bank to reach resolution with the U.S. government as to its potential criminal exposure for assisting its U.S. clients in engaging in tax evasion.[1] As part… – Continue reading
In This Issue: • It’s Stifling in Here! SEC Rules That Companies Can’t Put Restrictive Language in Confidentiality Agreements That Could Potentially Stifle Whistleblowers • An Opinion on Opinions: U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Omnicare • Is OFAC the New Black? Schlumberger and PayPal—The Rise in the Enforcement of Sanctions… – Continue reading
[HONG KONG] China is set to enhance the convertibility of its yuan currency by allowing capital to be taken out on a daily basis from the largest investment scheme open to foreign investors, people with knowledge of the plans told Reuters. This could strengthen the global standing of the yuan… – Continue reading
Commissioner Chris Jordan delivers rebuke to multinational tech giants contesting evidence they gave to a Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance The tax commissioner, Chris Jordan, has delivered a public rebuke to multinational tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft, vigorously contesting evidence they gave to a recent Senate inquiry hearing… – Continue reading
The nation’s most powerful and respected tax adviser has warned the Abbott government not to make a legislative “kneejerk” response to the current debate over multinationals shifting profits to avoid tax. Arnold Bloch Leibler senior partner Mark Leibler said today the current tough anti-avoidance provisions of the tax law should… – Continue reading
Dinesh Kanabar, CEO, Dhruva Advisors explains that there are three kinds of FIIs: protected by double taxation avoidance treaty, no treaty but physical presence in India, and no treaty and no presence in India. So far notices have been sent only to the second category of investors. Minimum alternate tax… – Continue reading
MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: Markets fell 500 points on Monday. Punters’ worries about current tax disputes between Modi Sarkar and foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) being one reason why the Sensex dived. There has been a battle of phrases between FPIs and North Block. And it looks as if this will be a… – Continue reading
Consumers want fair tax reform and increased spending on health and education Consumer pulse survey reveals top concerns With the federal budget just weeks away, the latest CHOICE consumer pulse research shows Australians support tax reform that doesn’t over-burden average households, and many want to see increased spending on healthcare… – Continue reading
UK’s biggest coffee shop brands Costa, Caffè Nero and Starbucks perform poorly in new ethical scorecard ranking companies on treatment of staff and suppliers, environmental policies and tax avoidance Consumers have been urged to switch to independent coffee shops after major brands including Costa, Caffè Nero and Starbucks scored poorly… – Continue reading
