Ambassador Furio De Angelis, the UN Refugee Agency’s man in Ottawa, says the media attention on the refugee crisis hitting Europe from all directions is a good thing, and one he hopes will translate into “concrete action.” He said the situation is dramatic, but it’s also a reflection of his… – Continue reading
International worldwide transactions in Mexico face a weakness as a result of an old and outdated provision which disallows for income tax purposes, the deduction of payments made abroad on a prorated basis with other parties that are not subject to Mexican income tax, such as foreign residents with no… – Continue reading
USA August | 31 2015 On August 25, 2015, Federal Decree No. 8506/2015 was published in the Official Gazette. This decree enacts the treaty signed in Brasilia on September 23, 2014, between Brazil and the United States to improve international tax compliance and implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act… – Continue reading
Funds Discovered in Kolomoyskyi’s Cyprus Kitty Investigative reporters have discovered that IMF bailout funds intended for Ukraine have mysteriously found their way to a Cyprus bank account controlled by notorious Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi. A huge chunk of the $17 billion in bailout money the IMF granted to Ukraine in… – Continue reading
NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwired – Aug 31, 2015) – Cross-border mergers and acquisitions are at their hottest pace since before the financial crisis. In fact, M&A volume was $1.10 trillion in 2014, up from $775.3 billion in 2013 and the highest since 2008. And intangible assets like intellectual property and goodwill… – Continue reading
Ministry of Finance officials say they are “monitoring developments” in Washington after the District of Columbia included Bermuda on a list of tax havens. The Island was one of 39 jurisdictions named on the list in changes to the municipality’s Budget Support Act. The changes will first have to be… – Continue reading
Navigating the murky waters of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) can be tricky. U.S businesses and individuals transacting in Latin America need to adhere to the requirements and regulations imposed by the fact. Here are four things every U.S business and individual needs to know about FATCA. Tax… – Continue reading
Shifting of income between parent and subsidiary companies for the purpose of avoiding taxation has been a consistent concern for state departments of revenue. States have enacted a variety of rules to ensure that the entities involved file and pay taxes accurately. In Spring Licensing Group, Inc. v. New Jersey… – Continue reading
A resolution was published in Panama’s official gazette in early August 2015 that provides rules concerning benefits under income tax treaties for the avoidance of double taxation. Specifically, under this new guidance, taxpayers can seek a ruling from the tax authorities as to whether treaty benefits will apply to a… – Continue reading
The following fact pattern should is representative of a tax evasion and structuring case. A taxpayer receives checks in the ordinary course of business from customers. Some of those checks are deposited into the business bank account and some are cashed. The cashed checks don’t equal or exceed $10,000. The… – Continue reading
On 25 August 2015, the Indian Ministry of Finance released an order extending the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) reporting filing deadline for Indian Financial Institutions to 10 September 2015 (from 31 August 2015). The FATCA Agreement between India and the United States was signed on 9 July 2015…. – Continue reading
Stanley Amland threw it off. So did Ingrid Bracke. Rhoda May Derksen ditched hers, too. The names, picked at random for this article from the Federal Register, are among the 3,415 Americans who renounced their U.S. citizenship or relinquished their residency permits last year. As a national debate rages about… – Continue reading
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) requires, in essence, that U.S. citizens who reside outside the U.S. disclose to the IRS all of their foreign banking assets including retirement plans, savings accounts, etc. It also requires foreign banks to assist the IRS in applying the disclosure rules or else… – Continue reading
Proposals for consistent global rules on company tax cause worries all round CLARITY or chaos? Supporters of the Base Erosion and Profit-Shifting (BEPS) project, being worked on by the OECD, argue that it will bind multinationals to a consistent set of global tax rules, providing them with less licence than… – Continue reading
Mumbai, Aug. 29 : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked all banks and financial institutions to be prepared to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). In a notification issued on Friday, the RBI said that India has signed an agreement with United States for improving international… – Continue reading
The Cayman Islands Department for International Tax Cooperation (DITC) has advised that it is in the final stages of preparing its FATCA data to be provided to the IRS. Information on US Reportable Account Notifications and 2014 Returns for US FATCA should now be completed and successfully submitted. It is… – Continue reading
The Internal Revenue Service loses billions of dollars annually because of offshore tax evasion. For years, a number of American taxpayers have evaded federal income taxes by channeling income into secret foreign or offshore bank accounts in some 70 countries. An award-winning investigative series by the Tribune-Review, $hadow Economy ,… – Continue reading
After years of commentary on FATCA from a distance, this writer got a little taste of it up close. It left a very unpleasant aftertaste and is taking a long time to go down. FATCA is bad for America. While knowing of, and criticising FATCA for years, it finally became… – Continue reading
Acting U.K. Overseas Territories Minister Grant Shapps said Thursday he is hopeful that Cayman and the Mother Country can reach some form of agreement on requirements to list the beneficial owners of companies registered here. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” Mr. Shapps said during a brief… – Continue reading
The IRS today publicly released two new “practice units”—i.e., training aids intended to describe for IRS agents leading practices for specific international and transfer pricing issues and transactions—providing overviews of foreign-to-foreign transactions under section 367(b) and the transfer pricing rules under section 482. The two new practice units (release date… – Continue reading
Introduction Transfer pricing methods and tested parties Troubling trend Tools for taxpayers Introduction In some recent transfer pricing audits the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has ‘flipped the tested party’ after examining transactions between related US and foreign companies. Typically, this practice results in the attribution of a larger portion of… – Continue reading
The Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance Bob Richards today [Aug 28] commented on a report that Bermuda has been named to a new tax haven list drawn up by the District of Columbia in the US. While such changes would first have to be reviewed by the US Congress… – Continue reading
The Bank of Israel asked Bank Leumi Le-Israel Ltd. to set up an independent committee to examine management performance and bonuses after the lender agreed in December to pay a fine to U.S. authorities in a tax probe. Leumi, Israel’s second-largest lender, agreed the $400 million fine after a seven-year… – Continue reading
The two top Republican tax writers in Congress are warning the Treasury Department not to get ahead of Congress as it negotiates new international tax rules, questioning whether the administration is seeking to wield power it does not have. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and House Ways and… – Continue reading
Regulator demands Bank Leumi investigate top management in wake of U.S. tax-evasion settlement. Bank Leumi should take back bonuses it paid three former senior executives after the lender was forced to pay a huge penalty to the United States for tax violations that occurred under their watch, Banks Supervisor David… – Continue reading
The Cayman Islands as one of the leading offshore financial centres have a great level of uncertainty in its future with all the recent developments around tax compliance. One looming uncertainty is the European Union’s (EU) Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) passport. The AIFMD is one of several measures… – Continue reading
Pakistan has decided to revise obsolete convention of double taxation and provision of fiscal evasion convention with the United State of America (USA) aimed at bringing the treaty at par with neighbouring countries, well informed sources told Business Recorder. Pakistan and US signed a convention on the avoidance of double… – Continue reading
Taipei, Aug. 27 (CNA) Taiwan and Japan have nearly completed negotiations on a bilateral agreement to avoid double taxation, a Taiwanese official said Thursday. The date of its signing is still being discussed, the official said. The negotiations on the agreement have almost been concluded, Chou Shyue-yow (周學佑), deputy director-general… – Continue reading
This Annual Conference Provides Global Tax Compliance Experts With Insight on Adopting an Internationally Accepted Standard of Tax Transparency and Compliance NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwired – August 25, 2015) – marcus evans, the world’s largest event management group, will host the 4th FATCA and Global Tax Compliance Forum on November 4-6,… – Continue reading
US fund managers and other investment advisers would have to take steps to combat money laundering and report suspicious transactions to authorities under a long-awaited US Treasury rule proposed on Tuesday, reports Reuters. If made final the proposal by Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) would close a long-standing hole… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: Regulator SEBI today asked market entities to ensure compliance with changed income tax regulations, with India becoming a signatory to FATCA as well as a global pact to check tax evasion. The latest directive comes close on the heels of the government signing FATCA with the United States… – Continue reading
New de-offshorization and capital amnesty laws could have widespread effects In an attempt to encourage “economic patriotism,” Russia recently adopted two new laws: (1) The De-Offshorization Law, which makes a number of major changes in the existing systems of corporate and personal taxation in Russia, particularly as they pertain to… – Continue reading
Security fears; Global authorities to begin sharing sensitive data If you have a bank account somewhere overseas, that information will make its way back to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) in a couple of years. In 2018, international tax authorities will begin automatically sharing financial information under the terms of… – Continue reading
The new head of Barclays Plc’s Swiss unit is pushing private bankers in Geneva and Zurich to double client assets in four years as international competitors exit the world’s largest hub for offshore wealth. James Buchanan-Michaelson, who joined from Coutts International in June, aims to increase Swiss assets, including loans,… – Continue reading
This month’s feature examines proposals for new tax information reporting requirements for large multinational businesses as part of wider and ongoing changes to the international tax system – proposals which have been described by international tax experts as the most significant development in the field of transfer pricing since TP… – Continue reading
After the leak of two major secret documents from HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm that revealed names of roughly 2,000 Indian account holders, the global bank itself has done it now. For the first time ever, HSBC Singapore shared a new list of 1,200 individuals all across the globe of… – Continue reading
Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) was enacted in 2010 by the Government of the United States of America (USA) (Govt. of US) with a view to combat tax evasion by U.S. citizens and residents through the use of offshore accounts. FATCA requires financial institutions globally to share information about… – Continue reading
The Income Tax Act (ITA) contains many anti-avoidance rules forbidding taxpayers from misusing the provisions of the ITA to achieve tax benefits contrary to Canadian tax policy. The 2015 Federal Budget has proposed changes1 to one of these anti-avoidance rules, which may significantly impact the ability of business owners to… – Continue reading
Aug. 21 — A federal court will hold a hearing Sept. 4 on whether to stop the U.S. from requiring banks in four countries to report information on U.S.-owned accounts under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. As the Sept. 30 deadline for that reporting approaches, the U.S. District Court… – Continue reading
Money laundering experts say there is no way for Canadians to know how much dirty money is being laundered in Vancouver real estate through Canadian lawyers. As a Province investigation revealed Monday, Canada’s financial intelligence unit Fintrac has ramped up an audit of Vancouver’s booming property market because of concerns… – Continue reading
India will soon settle international tax disputes with close to 120 American companies as well as entities from Japan and other such countries, according to the nation’s Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das. Earlier this month, India announced a Framework Agreement under the mutual agreement procedure provision of the India-US tax treaty… – Continue reading
MINISTER OF INTERNATIONAL Business, Donville Inniss is optimistic that given Barbados’ and Italy’s continued efforts at strengthening bilateral relations, Barbados could soon be removed from Italy’s blacklist. He made this disclosure this morning during his brief remarks at the end of a signing of a Double Taxation Agreement (DTA) between… – Continue reading
Aug 24 (Reuters) – Switzerland expects to adopt a new law by the end of the year that will speed restitution of illicit funds stashed in the Alpine country, where thousands of ‘politically exposed persons’ are believed to hold bank accounts, a top Swiss official said on Monday. Swiss authorities… – Continue reading
Investigator says Canadian real estate market has developed reputation as a place to launder money A report prepared for Canada’s anti-money laundering watchdog points to offshore cash in the real estate sector as a “significant risk” for criminal wrongdoing. The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, commonly known… – Continue reading
The multinational companies in Latin America demand security, efficient services, infrastructure and good educational standards, but they are not very willing to contribute themselves by paying their fair share of tax. Honduras is a case in point, and is one of the most unequal countries on the continent. The government,… – Continue reading
The United States has implemented laws and policies, such as the soon-to-be-activated FATCA legislation, which have redounded to the expense of Caricom territories. The Caribbean regional integration project is often described and criticised almost entirely on the uneven benefits of trade to member countries. But, important as it is, there… – Continue reading
The director of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, Pascal Saint-Amans, has praised The Bahamas for its “tremendous progress” in adopting Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) standards and paving the way for automatic exchange of information between the US and The… – Continue reading
A new paper shows that British banks engaged in more offshore banking than any other financial centre. Researchers examining the resilience of the world’s financial centres after the global economic crisis conclude that the future stability of the UK is perhaps the most uncertain of all. The paper concludes that… – Continue reading
India opposed the proposal saying it impinges on the sovereign rights of developing countries in taxation New Delhi: An international proposal to make arbitration mandatory and binding under mutual agreement procedures (MAP) in tax treaties has been dropped after India strongly opposed it. Last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation… – Continue reading
Ireland has made “little or no” effort over the past four years to create a corruption-free playing field for global trade, violating its “obligation to combat cross-border bribery”, reports the Irish Times. The Transparency International Exporting Corruption report, released on Thursday, found that Ireland, along with countries such as Russia,… – Continue reading
