Under a plan baked into the White House’s budget for 2016, U.S. corporations would theoretically be forced to pay hundreds of billions in new taxes on money kept abroad. Levying fees on the $2.1 trillion in funds largely held by shell companies through an accounting trick called deferral, the move,… – Continue reading
The call for tax transparency is being echoed around the globe, with ‘midshore’ centres like Bahrain and the UAE emerging as reputable, regulated and tax efficient jurisdictions A 2012 book entitled Offshore Apocalypse – The Collapse of the Tax Haven Industry, written by a team of tax-law academics, auditors, compliance… – Continue reading
The Finance Bill 2015 (the Bill) has quietly slipped in an amendment that could engender a fresh set of disputes with foreign companies away from the hitherto transfer pricing hair-splitting. Hitherto, all Indian companies were residents and all foreign companies were non-resident, period. Of course foreign companies would have become… – Continue reading
The government has done well to rein in the taxman to ensure that transfer-pricing (TP) additions fall in the last two audit rounds; from the peak of R70,000 crore in FY13, these have fallen to R60,000 crore in FY14, and then to R47,000 crore in FY15, as FE reported last… – Continue reading
UK official data show that almost 41,000 London properties owned by foreign companies 90% are based in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands (BVI), which do not have to disclose ownership information. Transparency International, the anti-corruption organisation, used Land Registry and Metropolitan Police data to identify 40,725 properties… – Continue reading
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, MARCH 4: The taxman has taken a headlong plunge into an alphabetic soup to comply/align with emerging tax and jurisdictional requirements, domestic and foreign, of which is GST is only one. Advance Pricing Agreements (APAs); General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR); BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Sharing); and POEM (Place… – Continue reading
Global entities liable to pay tax on yearly income if their place of effective management is India even for a single day Shell companies based abroad would have to pay taxes on their global income for a year if their place of effective management (POEM) is India even for a… – Continue reading
Foreign subsidiaries may now have to pay tax both in India and the country of their operations At present, a company incorporated outside India is considered a tax resident only if the control and management of its affairs is situated wholly in India. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint New Delhi: A budget… – Continue reading
After several rounds of revisions and consultations in the past few years, the State Administration of Taxation (“SAT”) has recently promulgated the Bulletin on Several Issues concerning the Enterprise Income Tax (“EIT”) on Indirect Asset Transfer by Non-Resident Enterprises (“Bulletin 7”)[1]. Tax matters occurred but have not been settled before… – Continue reading
The income tax department has scaled down its estimate of income suppression by multinational corporations in India in the 2014-15 audit of intra-group cross-border transactions to Rs 47,000 crore, a steep 22% decline from the extra taxable income the department had attributed to the firms in the previous audit. The… – 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
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
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
Mumbai: As a probe continues into the misuse of stock markets for evading taxes and laundering black money, 4-5 cartels of market operators have been identified for making illicit gains or showing fictional losses of several thousands of crores of rupees over last 2-3 years. According to sources, both ‘bull’… – Continue reading
News leaked late last week that Swiss banking giant UBS is again under DOJ investigation for aiding tax fraud by U.S. clients. In 2009, UBS pled guilty to a criminal tax conspiracy charge, and received a deferred prosecution agreement. UBS admitted that thousands of unreported and untaxed accounts at the… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: The government plans to defer implementation of the General Anti Avoidance Rules (GAAR) until the time the tax administration is able to rebuild trust with companies on the controversial issue. “Given the low level of confidence in tax authorities, investors fear that the provisions may result in harassment…. – Continue reading
Latin-American politicians Horacio Cartes (president of Paraguay), Álvaro Noboa (former president of Ecuador), and Alejandro Andrade (Venezuela’s ex-national treasurer) have one thing in common: they all possessed, until at least 2007, secret accounts with HSBC’s private Swiss bank. This according to the Swissleaks report published on Sunday, February 8, which… – Continue reading
WELLINGTON: More than 100,000 Rich Kiwis have been caught with extra tax bills as the result of a huge file leak revealing the global super wealthy hid millions of dollars from tax authorities with the help of HSBC’s Swiss private bank. Inland Revenue investigated New Zealand links to the leaked… – Continue reading
The mainland has stepped up its participation in the G20’s fight against international tax avoidance by passing a law cracking down on the indirect sale of assets outside the country to avoid paying taxes. The law would affect investment companies, analysts said, adding it would also have a significant impact… – Continue reading
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Action Plan 6 on the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative recognizes that countries need to incorporate sufficient safeguards in their tax treaties and domestic rules to protect against practices that take advantage of the differences in national tax systems and… – Continue reading
As countries share more information, opportunities to squirrel away cash abroad will continue to narrow AMONG the sins that have most angered the austerity-weary everywhere is the use of undeclared offshore accounts to stash the wealth of the rich. Greeks were particularly enraged when data stolen from Swiss banks showed… – Continue reading
HONG KONG — China’s tax officials plan to step up efforts to collect taxes from multinational corporations in the latest of a series of moves in the last year, mostly against Western companies. The activities have included police raids on the headquarters of companies’ China operations and heavy fines under… – Continue reading
India and US reach common ground on Mutual Agreement Procedure (“MAP)” and break new ground on Advance Pricing Agreements (“APA”) Suchint Majmudar Just ahead of Obama’s momentous R-Day visit to India, the Competent Authorities of India and US reached a landmark breakthrough in cases involving mutual agreement procedure under the… – Continue reading
Tax avoidance costs developing countries billions every year. So this week 16 domestic and internationally focused organisations have joined forces to launch a campaign for a Tax Dodging Bill. When I mention in the course of a conversation that I work for an international development charity, I often get an… – Continue reading
With foreign investment, energy security and strategic partnerships at the top of his agenda, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi criss-crossed eight countries, including the US, Australia, Japan and Nepal, meeting more than 40 international leaders in the first six months of his tenure. Mr Modi is riding high on… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI, JANUARY 2: The dispute resolution mechanism for matters relating to international tax and transfer pricing has been streamlined. The Finance Ministry has put in place a new framework that seeks to bring much-needed rigour and neutrality to dispute resolution on international tax issues. The move should encourage multinationals… – Continue reading
Indian State Supreme Court (Bombay High Court) has issued two important verdicts concerning Vodafone and Shell. Case one: Vodafone India Services (P.) Ltd. Vs Union of India [2014] (Bombay High Court) Vodafone India issued certain equity shares to its Mauritius holding company at a premium of INR 8,509 ($134) per… – Continue reading
The lead article in The Sunday Times Business section today (authored by Simon Duke and David Smith) says that Britain is at the forefront of a crackdown on corporate tax avoidance – a blitz on tax avoidance by multinationals. The UK Treasury is planning a consultation on forcing multinationals like… – Continue reading
New Delhi, India is moving towards a tax-friendly regime to erase the “bad name” it has earned over the years, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday. “Our tax system has to be friendly with tax payers and that is what we are trying to do step by step,” he… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: Tax authorities are making a fresh bid to engage with taxpayers as they attempt to present a friendly face and wipe out the ghosts of controversial tax disputes of the past, which attracted global criticism. Reaching out to the taxpayer, both small and large, the department has lined… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: Seeking to reduce litigations and promote foreign investments, the Income Tax department has signed Advance Pricing Agreements with 5 multinational firms and plans to enter into more such pacts. “We have signed 5 APAs so far. We will be signing more in the coming days. Foreign companies are eager to… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI, MARCH 25: In what could be a source of comfort to multinational companies, the Income Tax Department is set to ink the first set of advance pricing agreements (APAs) with MNCs on March 31. Seven-eight agreements may be signed by the month end, informed sources said. An advance… – Continue reading
Apple, famous for its innovative products, is equally creative in its tax structure. From 2009 to 2012, it successfully sheltered US$44 billion from being taxed anywhere in the world, including sales generated in Australia. While there are probably some sound reasons for Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, to claim in a US congressional… – Continue reading
The chickens are quietly coming home to roost. In Europe, that is. For a long time, multinational companies have created shell companies – those offices where, beyond furniture and a teapot, there is hardly any business going on – to mainly pay lower tax and move illicit funds. These opaque… – Continue reading
