For several years now Google has been facing what appears to be a case of tax avoidance in the UK, at some point in time, the company went as far saying it did not make any money from business in the UK all in a desperate attempt to pay less… – Continue reading
NEWARK, NEW JERSEY (BLOOMBERG) – The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sought to make UBS Group turn over records on an account in Singapore held by a US citizen, setting up a showdown with the city-state over its bank-secrecy laws and potentially opening a new front against offshore tax evasion… – Continue reading
Retrospective amendments to domestic laws cannot override international treaties In a judgment that will have a far-reaching impact on double taxation issues, the Delhi High Court has held that Parliament cannot change the terms of an international treaty by bringing in amendments in the domestic law, and any such executive… – Continue reading
Facebook has caved to the tax pressure. The company is likely to pay millions more in U.K. taxes after making changes to its corporate structure that will stop revenue earned in the U.K. from being routed through Ireland. Facebook had been accused of “profit shifting,” a common practice for multinational… – Continue reading
Twenty Caribbean and Latin American nations have been named by the U.S. as “major money laundering” countries in the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) from the U.S. State Department released Wednesday, Mar. 2, 2016. A major money laundering is defined by statute as one “whose financial institutions engage… – Continue reading
For now… corporations, as responsible global citizens, should endeavour to pay their fair share of taxes to avoid threats to their own long term sustainability. Multinational companies like Google, Starbucks, Facebook, Amazon and other global corporations are constantly coming under public fire for avoiding taxes on their British sales. For… – Continue reading
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) welcomes the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) plan to allow all countries to participate on an equal footing with OECD and G20 countries in the implementation of the OECD/G20 Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS) plan. The framework announced by the OECD early… – Continue reading
The pet project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) – housed in the Gujarat International Finance Tec City – has received a boost in the Union Budget 2016/17. The long pending tax issue has been decided with 9 per cent minimum alternate tax (MAT),… – Continue reading
In Shanghai, Wolfgang Schäuble is urging his fellow G20 countries to put new rules to tackle tax avoidance into law. Back home, business leaders worry that German companies could be left exposed by the new rules if they are introduced unilaterally or go too far. The finance ministers of the… – Continue reading
A “controlled foreign company” (CFC) is, as the name implies, a foreign company or subsidiary owned by a parent company which is situated in a country different from the parent company’s country of residence. The tax laws of many countries, including the Philippines, do not tax the CFC’s parent company… – Continue reading
Its official name is the global standard for automatic exchange of financial account information – these nine words are a simple distillation of an ambitious project to tackle global tax evasion. Known more regularly as the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), it will see government-to-government sharing of account holder information and… – Continue reading
In its time, the Irving empire has had plenty of federal contracts — all of them lucrative, many of them controversial. So it wasn’t a surprise to hear that a federal cabinet committee is reviewing Irving’s $26 billion sole-source (but still unsigned) contract to build a fleet of warships for… – Continue reading
Malta has always insisted it is no tax haven, but it employs a system which allows foreign shareholders to claim a six-sevenths’ refund on their taxed dividends, taxed at the maximum 35%. There’s a new battle lining up for the Maltese government inside Brussels: an aggressive fight against tax avoidance… – Continue reading
Free-market advocates say retrospective tax claim on the British telecom major sends a negative message to global investors. It seems to be a weak argument Like all tax disputes, the one that involves Vodafone and the government is quite a tangled one. The company has been absolved of tax liability… – Continue reading
Having launched and led the battle against offshore tax evasion, America is now part of the problem DEVIN NUNES raised eyebrows in 2013 when, as chairman of a congressional working group on tax, he urged reforms that would make America “the largest tax haven in human history”. Though he was… – Continue reading
The 15 part action plan aims to tackle global inequalities in taxation income, increasing transparency for tax administrators and significantly improving Multinational Enterprises’s compliance. With tax regulations of large corporations at the forefront of all policy makers’ minds, this latest endeavour from the OECD and G20 will address the varying… – Continue reading
CAN NEPAL IMPOSE CAPITAL GAINS TAX ON NCELL BUYOUT DEAL? This question has been making rounds ever since TeliaSonera, the largest shareholder in Nepali telecom operator, Ncell, announced its decision to sell 60.4 per cent of its stake in the telecom company to Malaysian giant, Axiata, for $1.03 billion. Divergent… – Continue reading
Similar trade agreements have been used to facilitate apparent tax avoidance in the past A controversial new trade deal between the EU and the United States could make it more difficult to fight tax avoidance, a new report has warned. TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, is expected to… – Continue reading
Rules should require foreign owners of prime London homes to come clean about beneficiary owners, say anti-corruption groups Large parts of London’s Baker Street, including the Beatles store, are owned by offshore trusts. New laws that aim to stop the UK being a magnet for money launderers – by forcing… – Continue reading
Google’s top global tax executive told U.K. lawmakers that a new U.K. tax provision dubbed “the Google Tax” will not actually apply to the U.S. technology giant. The law, officially the Diverted Profits Tax, was introduced last year amid concerns that Google parent Alphabet Inc. and other global tech companies… – Continue reading
Just when you thought the banksters had done all they could to rig the game against people that bail them out, you hear another tale of industrial-strength greed. This time, the scam is so ironic it’s almost absurd. For almost a decade the U.S. government has been going around the… – Continue reading
Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison says overseas companies selling digital products to Australians will not be able to avoid paying the GST. The so-called Netflix Tax that would see overseas-based businesses selling digital products to Australians collect 10 percent GST has entered the House of Representatives. Introduced by Treasurer Scott Morrison,… – Continue reading
Taxing decisions With highly efficient labour markets, a solid institutional environment and a strong banking system, Canada has long been considered one of the most competitive nations in the world. In fact, in its most recent rankings in 2014, Bloomberg declared Canada the second best country in the world for… – Continue reading
Voluntary Disclosure & CRA Annual Report to Parliament – General Information CRA has provided the latest statistics about the tax amnesty or voluntary disclosure program (VDP) for the previous fiscal year. CRA provides an annual report to parliament that provides a wealth of information about its activities over the past… – Continue reading
Former Standard Chartered chief says eliminating €500, $100, SFr1,000 and £50 notes would prevent corrupt payments Governments should consider scrapping high denomination banknotes to combat financial crime and tax evasion, including paying tradespeople in cash, a former bank boss has said. Criminals move more than $2tn (£1.4tn) around the world… – Continue reading
Journalist Steve Topple investigates Bermuda-based big business tax avoidance and its links with UK political parties – and even some charities LAST WEEK saw the news emerge that everyone’s favourite search engine, Google, only had to pay £97m in back-tax (not the “major success” of £130m as was first reported)… – Continue reading
Large multinational corporations such as Amazon.com, Apple, Google and Starbucks with operations in Europe have long been able to keep the tax rate they pay in one country secret, not only from neighboring nations but also from their competitors. Critics say this lack of transparency has allowed companies to unfairly… – Continue reading
‘Multinational corporations complain all the time of excessive demand about excessive taxation, but it is also true that MNCs across the world tend to find tax avoidance and sometimes tax evasion as an appropriate technique’ Blaming multinational corporations squarely for tax controversies, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan has said their… – Continue reading
Insurance firm has been domiciled in Ireland since 2009 The insurance group Beazley has said it will move its headquarters back to London more than six years after shifting to Dublin for tax reasons. The FTSE 250 firm will ask shareholders to vote on the move back to the UK… – Continue reading
A collective of unions has slammed the latest proposals by the European Commission to stamp out elaborate tax plans used by multinational companies to move vast profits around the EU in an effort to reduce their corporate tax bills in member states. The European Commission last week published a series… – Continue reading
The brands are known worldwide, and even though global companies like Google, Amazon, and Starbucks make billions — they pay little or no taxes at all in the UK and other markets where the firms make a majority of revenue and profits. Companies like Microsoft, Twitter, and Apple don’t set… – Continue reading
BEIJING: China is planning a pilot programme to allow selected commercial banks to set up equity investment arms to take direct stakes in technology firms, people familiar with the matter said, a move aimed at giving lenders a chance to buy into a high-growth industry while stoking competition with private… – Continue reading
Though the use of the retrospective tax on Vodafone and Cairn tend to grab the headlines, a large part of the ‘tax terror’ in India has really been the contribution of the high-pitched transfer pricing (TP) additions to the income of the MNCs Though the use of the retrospective tax… – Continue reading
India and the U.S. have reached an agreement to resolve more than 100 pending transfer pricing cases, one of the biggest deterrents for foreign investors planning an India foray, according to a government statement. Some more are expected to be resolved soon. Transfer pricing refers to the setting of the… – Continue reading
Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro officially announced the aggregate tax revenue for 2015, amounting to Rp 1 quadrillion (US$72.46 billion). This record breaking number, however, was far below the target, by more than Rp 230 trillion. Still, the minister claimed the results were a decent achievement. This is true, especially because… – Continue reading
swissinfo.ch charts the evolution of the long-running tax dodging dispute between Switzerland and the United States and looks at how far there is still to go before the final curtain can be drawn on the affair. The United States wound up its “Category 2” tax evasion programme on Wednesday, netting… – Continue reading
BRUSSELS (Alliance News) – The EU stepped up the fight against corporate tax avoidance Thursday, unveiling proposals including an EU-wide blacklist of international tax havens, as part of a wider clampdown on firms using loopholes to reduce their tax bills. The EU’s executive estimates that member states are deprived of… – Continue reading
Could you be one of the lucky expats who qualifies for tax free living in the Seychelles? Or would you have to pay the Seychelles flat tax on personal income? At first glance it looks as though the Seychelles levies a flat rate of personal income tax, and at only… – Continue reading
Moving money out of the usual offshore secrecy havens and into the U.S. is a brisk new business. Last September, at a law firm overlooking San Francisco Bay, Andrew Penney, a managing director at Rothschild & Co., gave a talk on how the world’s wealthy elite can avoid paying taxes…. – Continue reading
Australia must not be blown off course from getting a company tax rate closer to 20 per cent. Corporate tax transparency figures released in December by the Australian Taxation Office should not slow momentum. For the first time, the ATO reported the tax affairs of companies with total incomes of… – Continue reading
Despite EU intentions to crack down on tax avoidance, the European Commission’s Anti-Tax Avoidance Package does not do what it says on the tin, warns Oxfam, and developing countries will feel the EU’s failure most. The package comes a week after the international NGO revealed that just 62 people own… – Continue reading
The People’s Bank of China supports the country’s currency and fends off short sellers in the world’s largest overseas yuan market (Beijing) – The offshore yuan market in Hong Kong has been shaken to the core by weeks of volatility that analysts blame on strong intervention by China’s central bank…. – Continue reading
Directive follows a series of high-profile tax cases involving Google, Apple and others. Rampant corporate tax dodging and sweetheart deals that cheat governments and skew markets, have prompted the European Commission to unveil a new directive Thursday. The proposed legislation follows a quick succession of tax rulings, settlements and investigations… – Continue reading
The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has added more banks to the swelling list of financial institutions involved in tax avoidance. Customers of these banks owning up to past financial indiscretions under the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) face penalties based on balances over the past eight years. Penalties for… – Continue reading
Yesterday was quite a day for corporate tax geeks. We saw a corporate tax inversion that comes with a long, Baroque history; an estimate by Reed College economist Kim Clausing that inversions and other income-shifting techniques reduced Treasury revenues by as much as $111 billion in 2012; and a new… – Continue reading
GE division makes millions in sales to health service, and is net beneficiary from UK Exchequer One of the biggest suppliers of equipment and testing services to the NHS pays barely any corporate tax in the UK, despite receiving hundreds of millions of pounds a year from medical sales to… – Continue reading
Multinational companies are facing severe constraints on their ability to avoid taxes on their activities in Europe as regulators seek to close loopholes laid bare by the LuxLeaks scandal Pierre Moscovici, the EU’s tax policy chief, will set out plans next week to curb practices such as using debt interest… – Continue reading
A group of businesses in the Welsh town of Crickhowell have gone offshore as part of a campaign to try and get HMRC to change tax laws. The Welsh town of Crickhowell is spearheading a unique campaign to get HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to change the laws so companies… – Continue reading
Apple Inc. is pushing back against an European tax investigation that could force the iPhone maker to pay more than $8 billion in back taxes. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook met with the European Commission’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager in Brussels on Thursday to press the company’s case. After the… – Continue reading
The Yomiuri Shimbun Four international organizations will join forces to devise unified global tax rules aimed at preventing tax evasion by multinational companies. The four entities involved are the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The OECD — whose… – Continue reading
