The Italian Supreme Court overturned decisions of lower courts to conclude that two renowned Italian fashion designers were not guilty of tax evasion. The designers, however, could still be subject to civil penalties of about €343.3 million. BACKGROUND The designers had set up Luxembourg companies, to which they had transferred… – Continue reading
Over 90 jurisdictions have committed to the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard (CRS), creating comprehensive global automatic information exchange for financial assets and the entities through which such assets may be held. Over 70 jurisdictions have signed the OECD’s Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement, which implements the CRS. The CRS is scheduled… – Continue reading
The Department of Justice announced today that Privatbank IHAG Zürich AG (IHAG) reached a resolution under the department’s Swiss Bank Program. IHAG will pay a penalty of more than $7 million. “Through the information provided by IHAG and other Swiss banks in the Program, the department has unraveled the various… – Continue reading
ISLAMABAD: In a major scam tax evasion of hundreds of billions of rupees and whitening of black money worth trillions of rupees take place every year with the government authorities facilitating the extremely undervalued sales and purchases of thousands of residential and commercial properties throughout the country every day. While… – Continue reading
VietNamNet Bridge – Apple Operations International (AOI), the owner of Apple Vietnam, has been involved in in the past in tax evasion scandals in the US and Ireland. Vietnamese newspapers reported that Apple has ‘quietly established a subsidiary in Vietnam called Apple Vietnam Limited Liability Company as written in the… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: Tightening the noose around Indians whose names figured in the ‘stolen’ Swiss HSBC bank black money list, the Enforcement Directorate has begun a preliminary investigation in these cases for an independent hawala and money laundering probe. The agency recently has begun obtaining from various court registries the details… – Continue reading
The creation of the Group of Twenty (G20) was believed to serve as a remedy to the harsh realities of the world today. The initial formation of the Group of Seven G7 could do little to avert pertinent challenges both the developing and the developed nations face frequently. So a… – Continue reading
Lately, the IRS is warning offshore account holders to disclose before it’s too late. Under FATCA, banks everywhere want to know if you are compliant with the IRS. And the cost of compliance for many people is growing. The IRS updated its list of foreign banks where accounts trigger a… – Continue reading
Three Swiss banks will pay a total of more than $81 million to the U.S. Justice Department to avoid possible prosecution for helping Americans to evade taxes, the department said on Thursday. The three banks, the Swiss unit of BNP Paribas SA (BNPP.PA); KBL (Switzerland) Ltd (LU0092281103.BR); and Bank CIC,… – Continue reading
On 18 June 2013, the Progressive led government issued a press release titled, “Cayman’s Action Plan Includes Beneficial Ownership”. The press statement came on the heels of the UK taking over the Presidency of G8, at the 17-18 June 2013 G8 Summit in Northern Ireland. The most interesting part of… – Continue reading
Officials from the ministries of finance and economy of five CEE countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) have called for a joint approach to combat VAT fraud and increase VAT collection in a conference hosted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Budapest on Thursday. According to the EU Commission data,… – Continue reading
Compare this to the 2601 tax-related incarcerations in 2014 in the US. Jail for tax evasion is common in that country. The most well- known case is that of the gangster Al Capone who spent 7 years in jail as far back as 1932 to 1939. In recent years, actor… – Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE – On November 19, the government of St. Lucia signed an agreement with the Government of the United States of America to implement the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Enacted by the U.S. Congress in 2010, FATCAtargets non-compliance by U.S. taxpayers using foreign accounts. FATCA requires… – Continue reading
Online accommodation platform, Airbnb, appeared before the Senate Inqury into the tax avoidance of multinational companies on Wednesday, with the ANZ manager arguing the startup brings a significant amount of money into the economy. Airbnb has found itself in the spotlight on Wednesday, when a Senate inquiry into the tax… – Continue reading
Finnish companies continue to take advantage of legal tax planning to shelter their profits from taxation. According to Yle’s Ajankohtainen kakkonen current affairs programme, state-owned firms are among those that have been dragging their feet on reporting income from their foreign subsidiaries. The European Union is making an effort to… – Continue reading
Google is said to have evaded paying an estimated $1.3 billion earned from selling apps in Korea based on the argument that their server is based in Ireland. The so called ‘Google Tax’, also known as the Base Erosion & Profit Shifting (BEPS) regulation, has been adopted this week by… – Continue reading
On November 10th 2015, the European Council announced that the EU Savings Directive 2003/48/EC (EUSD) has been repealed in order to eliminate the overlap with other legislation developed in the aspect of preventing measures of tax evasion. Brief Background The 2003 EUSD, which originally came into effect on 1 July… – Continue reading
MELAKA, Nov 17 (Bernama) — The Inland Revenue Board (IRB) has highlighted the transfer pricing (TP) and abuse of treaties in base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) issues at the 36th Commonwealth Association of Tax Administrators Conference (CATA) here today. IRB, in a statement today, said CATA members were serious… – Continue reading
The US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) has helped grab £5.17 billion in lost tax held in secret offshore bank accounts. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has revealed the figures in a FATCA update. The IRS says the controversial law has made identifying offshore cash and investments that taxpayers… – Continue reading
Recently, the Internal Revenue Service announced the exchange of financial account information with certain foreign tax administrations as the next step in efforts to combat offshore tax evasion. This is a significant portion of the IRS’s efforts to enforce FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which was enacted in… – Continue reading
As a reminder, the international automatic exchange of financial account information is considered by most countries as particularly efficient in the fight against tax evasion and international tax fraud and is becoming the new global standard (considering the US FATCA legislation, the OECD Common Reporting Standard). The Belgian Council of… – Continue reading
The FINANCIAL — Apostle Matthew was a tax collector in Galilee — perhaps the most hated occupation in the ancient world. By quitting his job and deciding to follow Jesus, Mathew accomplished one the greatest transformations possible in a person’s life. Modern tax inspectors are certainly not expected to follow… – Continue reading
Early last week, Greece’s financial prosecutors sent a long letter to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, urging him to appoint more inspectors and expert staff to boost their efforts to raise much-needed revenue from tax evasion, Kathimerini understands. The 26-page letter, the second to be sent to Tsipras this year, was… – Continue reading
Plans to change Switzerland’s banking secrecy laws have been temporarily shelved. The reforms would have made it easier for the Swiss authorities to get information from domestic banks about suspected tax evaders. The cabinet said on Wednesday that the change of heart was due to the slim chance of success… – Continue reading
Leaders of world’s major economies gather in Turkish city of Antalya Leaders of the world’s major economies gather in the Turkish city of Antalya this weekend for the tenth annual G20 summit. The summit takes place at a sensitive moment in international affairs. The war in Syria and the resulting… – Continue reading
SPAIN is among Europe’s worst offenders for helping firms launder money and avoid paying tax. According to European Network report, 50 Shades of Tax Dodging, Spain is the fourth worst offender behind Luxembourg, Germany and Italy. The report accuses Spain of conducting the most aggressive tax treaty negotiations with developing… – Continue reading
PSDB amendment in Lower House cuts Speaker Cunha out of deal, but Senate still has final say BRASILIA — The Lower House of Brazil’s Congress has approved a controversial amnesty bill for undeclared offshore assets, despite criticism from opposition lawmakers who say it would allow the laundering of illegally gained… – Continue reading
Ahead of a G20 meeting in Turkey this weekend that will tackle, among other issues, the GDP lost to global tax havens, the anti-poverty organization Oxfam is warning that it’s not just poor countries that suffer when corporations evade taxes. Julie Delahanty, Oxfam Canada’s executive director, says the only people… – Continue reading
VALLETTA) – Senegalese President Macky Sall called Thursday for multinationals to pay their fair share of taxes following a summit with EU leaders aimed at curbing the poverty fuelling mass migration to Europe. Sall also said Africans should receive a a fair price for their natural resources when he addressed… – Continue reading
BRASILIA, Nov 11 (Reuters) – The lower house of Brazil’s Congress approved amnesty for undeclared offshore assets on Wednesday despite criticism from opposition lawmakers who said it would allow the laundering of illegally gained money. To reduce its budget deficit, President Dilma Rousseff’s government is hoping to raise 11 billion… – Continue reading
New York, Nov 12 (Just Earth News/IBNS): Citing an enormous loss of $100 to $240 billion dollars in uncollected global corporate income tax revenues each year, Oh Joon, President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Wednesday stressed the need to curb tax evasion and avoidance and… – Continue reading
Hyderabad: Customers of several public and private sector banks across the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are finding fault with their bankers for asking to fill up more forms under Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), and Common Reporting Standard (CRS). The new rules have come into effect from November 1,… – Continue reading
The Caribbean island says its financial system is all aboveboard, yet it remains a gateway to less scrupulous offshore havens like the Cayman Islands. BRIDGETOWN — Is there “dirty” money strewn across the pristine sands of Barbados? Does something sinister hide beneath the glistening coral reefs of this former pirate… – Continue reading
The implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliant Act is showing consistent progress with thousands of banks in over 150 countries agreeing to share financial accounts data of their US clientele with US taxation authorities. This clearly indicates the firm resolve of the US administration to make this initiative a… – Continue reading
Presidency sent to Congress ratification of treaties with Jersey, Guernsey, the Cayman Islands and Uruguay; text follows the G20 guidelines The Presidency referred for evaluation of Congress four agreements for the exchange of tax information (TIEA, which stands for the English term “Tax Information Exchange Agreement”) entered into with Uruguay,… – Continue reading
Britain has done more to tackle secretive company ownership practices which facilitate corruption than other leading economies, while the United States and China are falling short of their promises, a leading anti-corruption group said. Britain has made good progress on making beneficial ownership information accessible, having legislated for a central… – Continue reading
DID you hear the story about the Queen, tax evasion, a nationalised British bank for the rich and famous, a whistleblower and a £7bn under sale to ‘reward cronies and cheat the taxpayer’? Sounds like a pretty big deal, right? But last Thursday’s damning testimony from Helen Goodman MP –… – Continue reading
A recent CNBC report suggests that several billion dollars of estate tax due from the estates of foreign decedents on investments in U.S. stock and real estate goes uncollected by the IRS every year. The report noted a large discrepancy between the amount of foreign investment in these assets and… – Continue reading
Ghana’s financial secrecy – the tendency to facilitate tax evasion, money laundering and illicit financial transfers – has been rated at a fairly high 67 per cent. The Tax Justice Network, an organisation concerned with tax havens and tax evasion, ranked Ghana 48th out of 92 territories, in its 2015… – Continue reading
NZ welcomes Cook Islands measures to tackle tax avoidance Minister of Revenue Todd McClay has welcomed a decision by the Cook Islands government to implement the ‘Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters Agreement’ (AEOI) and says the Cooks Islands and New Zealand will play their part to… – Continue reading
LONDON, Nov 8: The British government has set a target for this year to triple annual prosecutions for the most serious tax evasion to 100 each year. It plans to create a “strict liability” offence of offshore tax evasion, according a report in the international media. This means that an… – Continue reading
The European Network on Debt and Development (also known as “Eurodad”), a network of NGOs, has issued a recent report identifying European nations that have served as havens for tax evasion and money laundering. According to the report, Germany, Luxembourg, and Spain are among the most egregious offenders. By turning… – Continue reading
A Sydney accountant has been convicted and sentenced for his role in advising a client on how to hide funds offshore, resulting in the avoidance of $4.5 million in tax. Following a nine-week trial by jury, Raymond Clifford Osborne, 63, was found guilty on two counts of defrauding the Commonwealth… – Continue reading
HM Revenue and Customs is failing to prosecute wealthy tax evaders who hide their fortunes in overseas, MPs have warned, reports the Isle of Man Today. The Commons Public Accounts Committee said HMRC’s record of just 11 prosecutions for offshore tax evasion in the past five years was “woefully inadequate”… – Continue reading
04/11/2015 – Uganda today signed the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters. It is the 8th country of the African continent to sign the Convention and the 90th jurisdiction to join it. Her Excellency, Nimisha Janat Madhvani, Uganda’s Ambassador to France, signed the Convention in the presence… – Continue reading
Today the EU and Andorra initialled the text of a new tax transparency agreement, marking another important step forward in the fight against tax evasion. Under the new agreement, Andorra and EU Member States will automatically exchange information on the financial accounts of each other’s residents from 2018. Pierre Moscovici,… – Continue reading
LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) – British authorities must start reporting the full scale of aggressive tax avoidance and prosecute more people for evading tax by moving money offshore, lawmakers said on Wednesday. The Public Accounts Committee of Britain’s parliament said the government’s tax agency, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), should… – Continue reading
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is “still failing UK taxpayers” because of its “abysmal” performance in dealing with queries from taxpayers. The cross-party committee of MPs stressed that the “unacceptable” quality of HMRC’s customer service is a “genuine threat” to the collection… – Continue reading
Hong Kong is the world’s second least transparent financial center, making it vulnerable to tax evasion, money laundering and other wrongdoing. It is topped only by Switzerland in a global survey by Tax Justice Network, a coalition of researchers and activists focused on tax avoidance issues. The United States ranks… – Continue reading
The number of U.K. prosecutions for offshore tax evasion is “woefully inadequate” and the tax agency, Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, is failing to provide lawmakers with the information they need to close loopholes used for avoidance, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said. The agency should also publish… – Continue reading
