The Diverted Profits Tax (DPT), known by many as the “Google Tax”, is intended to stop large groups diverting profits from the UK by seeking to avoid creating a UK permanent establishment or using arrangements or entities which lack economic substance to exploit tax mismatches. Tax mismatches occur where intra-group… – Continue reading
ISLAMABAD: A district and sessions court on Monday handed over 17 Axact employees here on physical remand over their alleged involvement in fraudulent practices, issuing fake degrees, money laundering and deceiving the public by acting as student counsellors. Civil judge Islamabad Rasool Bakhsh sent the suspects on physical remand for… – Continue reading
A new report from the Internal Revenue Service indicated that the upper-echelon of wealth is hoarding more money than we initially thought, reported The Washington Post. We all know how much money the one-percent hoards, but what about the top one-thousandth percent? To be apart of that group, one must… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: Several countries, including tax havens like British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and Jersey, have begun sharing information with Indian authorities, in a development that is expected to boost the government’s efforts in tracking black money stashed abroad. Sources said some of the information had already been verified, adding that… – Continue reading
EU regulators today gave Poland and Estonia a month to hand over details of their tax ruling practices. It also ordered 15 other countries to provide data on individual tax bills as part of a region-wide investigation. Pressures on government budgets since the global financial crisis have spurred a crackdown… – Continue reading
New Delhi/Mumbai: India’s goal of a friendlier tax regime for global companies to help power China-beating economic growth is hitting a manpower hurdle. Fewer than 20 officials face the complex task of working with hundreds of multinational companies (MNCs) on pacts to avert tax rows, people familiar with the matter… – Continue reading
Where a foreign company renders professional services to a South African company, it is important that the foreign entity considers whether, as a result of rendering such services, the foreign company will create a permanent establishment in South Africa. The reason why this becomes important is that where a foreign… – Continue reading
A Malta-based shell company is linked to financial transactions which likely saw Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his family amass hundreds of millions of euro at the expense of the country he leads and its citizens. FA Invest (Malta), whose registered address is in the Cornerstone Complex in Mosta, has… – Continue reading
Crucial deadlines are approaching for millions of U.S. taxpayers who live abroad or have offshore financial ties. For expatriates, the annual income-tax filing deadline is normally June 15, instead of April 15. In addition, all U.S. taxpayers with offshore accounts totaling more than $10,000 in 2014–regardless of where they live–have… – Continue reading
The government scheme dubbed “stability savings account”, which lets people repatriate offshore money, should be scrapped because it is making Hungary into a “gangsters’ paradise”, the green LMP party said. It also undermines tax morale and the credibility of the tax system, László Heltai, the party’s economic spokesman, said in… – Continue reading
A businessman caught in a money-laundering sting helped the U.S. prosecute a foreign business — and now he’s seeking $22.2 million from the government as a reward. The U.S. Tax Court ruled Tuesday in favor of the informant, allowing his claim to proceed after the Internal Revenue Service earlier denied… – Continue reading
Jersey experienced a 10% increase in new company incorporations in 2014 over the previous year, according to a report released today by Appleby, one of the world’s largest providers of offshore legal, fiduciary and administrative services. Last year also saw the total number of active companies on Jersey’s registry rise… – Continue reading
A COMMON REPORTING STANDARD ACROSS THE WORLD The goalposts in international tax reporting are moving rapidly. In conjunction with the G20, the OECD developed the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) as a global standard for the automatic exchange of information. This was approved by the OECD Council on 15 July 2014… – Continue reading
There’s been a preliminary investigation into the amount of money that secret bank accounts Belgians have in Switzerland can yield for the Belgian treasury. It turns out the answer is EUR 540 million. Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt (Flemish Nationalists) revealed the figures to financial newspaper De Tijd. “However, the… – Continue reading
The chairman, Senate Committee on Establishment and Public Service Matters, Aloysius Etok, yesterday, revealed that Nigeria has lost over N2 trillion as a result of tax evasion by capable companies and cybercrimes perpetrated by some Nigerians. Etok made this disclosure during his address at the valedictory session of the National… – Continue reading
KARACHI: A district and sessions court remanded on Wednesday four more suspects in Axact-gate scandal for one day. The four – Muhammad Rizwan, Atif Hussain, Imran Ahmed Khan and Adnan Saboor – who were recently taken into custody after some leads given by the detained suspects were presented by the… – Continue reading
Bermuda experienced 4% year-on-year growth in new company registrations in 2014, with more than 1,000 companies incorporating in the jurisdiction for the second year in a row, according to a report released today [June 3] by Appleby. In total, 1,113 new companies incorporated in Bermuda in 2014, according to the… – Continue reading
Controversial recent changes to UK and EU law combined with parallel G8, G20 and OECD measures risk the beneficial owners of certain companies being subjected to unwanted public scrutiny. However, help is at hand for affected individuals. The political background Reacting to concerns about tax evasion, money laundering and the… – Continue reading
Some of the first banks that streamed into Crimea after Russia wrested control of the region from Ukraine in 2014 were better known for laundering money than banking. Five of the banks have questionable histories, including ties to the US$ 20 billion money laundering scandal known as the Russian Laundromat… – Continue reading
As Cayman finds itself at the heart of what may be the world’s biggest ever corruption scandal, following the arrest of local football boss, Jeffrey Webb, the premier has defended the jurisdiction in a statement from his office about the FIFA probe. Alden McLaughlin said that local law enforcement agencies… – Continue reading
Law360, New York (June 3, 2015, 3:24 PM ET) — Final rules released Wednesday by the Internal Revenue Service meant to deter corporate inversions retain a strict bright-line rule that subjects an inverted company to sanctions if it does not have a substantial business presence in a foreign country, despite… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: CBDT has issued fresh instructions to the taxman to ensure that information on individuals holding black money abroad is strictly kept secret as it stressed that any “careless” act could give an excuse to the data supplying country for not helping India in the future. “In many countries,… – Continue reading
Belgium is seeking to retrieve about €540m (£390, $600m) in unpaid tax after its probe into 829 accounts in HSBC Private Suisse Bank in Geneva. Belgian finance minister Johan Van Overtveldt earlier made the estimate, which has been confirmed by various media outlets. The people, who were found to be… – Continue reading
A new report by Oxfam has revealed that international companies cheated Africa out of $11 billion in 2010. The report titled “Africa: Rising for the Few” released yesterday revealed that the loss is equivalent to more than six times the amount needed to deliver universal primary healthcare in the Ebola-affected… – Continue reading
Malaysia’s offshore financial centre of Labuan, an island designated as Special Economic Zone off the northern Borneo coast, which has seen a surge in interest in Islamic finance transactions in the last year, now aims at positioning itself as an Islamic finance hub for the Asia-Pacific region. According to its… – Continue reading
Developments in Asia over the last year have been continuous with the biggest generic development relating to the exchange of information. Asian countries have put their FATCA reporting systems in place (even though not all have yet signed an inter-governmental agreement with the US IRS), and most have now committed… – Continue reading
Sinn Féin TD calls on Taoiseach to defend constitutional protection Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald has again defended her use Dáil privilege to name former politicians who were accused of having offshore bank accounts to evade tax In an Irish Times piece on Tuesday, businessman Denis O’Brien was critical of… – Continue reading
Africa is known as the ‘paradox of plenty’. How can a continent so rich in natural resources be so poor? Economic growth is predicted to increase by 4.5% across the continent this year, despite falling oil prices and the Ebola crisis. South Africa’s economy, the second biggest in Africa is… – Continue reading
Last week, the Justice Department announced that it had reached resolutions with four more Swiss banks under the terms of the DOJ Swiss Bank Program. The latest banks to resolve their U.S. tax issues are the following: Société Générale Private Banking (Lugano-Svizzera); MediBank AG; LBBW (Schweiz) AG; and Scobag Privatbank… – Continue reading
A Gold Coast businessman has been banned from the financial services industry for taking $4 million from self-managed super fund (SMSF) investors to fund his own real estate investments. The Federal Court in Brisbane banned Craig Gore permanently and five other people from carrying on any business related to superannuation… – Continue reading
KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has, during its probe into the Axact scandal, unearthed seven offshore companies that were being run by Shoaib Shaikh. According to FIA sources, the agency during the forensic inspection of the data retrieved from Axact’s computers seized by the authorities earlier has ascertained that… – Continue reading
Barclays has launched an internal review into whether its accounts were used for corrupt payments by FIFA officials, a banking source told AFP on Sunday. Standard Chartered has also said it was investigating payments cited in the US indictment. UK-headquartered Barclays, Standard Chartered and HSBC were among more than a… – Continue reading
British Virgin Islands, Caymans and Turks & Caicos feature heavily in justice department indictment of senior football officials British overseas tax havens play a key role in what US authorities have called “rampant, systemic and deep-rooted” corruption in the world of football, analysis by the Observer reveals. The 164-page US… – Continue reading
UBS Global Asset Management (Taiwan) Ltd (瑞銀環球資產管理台灣) has received Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) approval to launch a consulting service in Taiwan via an offshore banking unit, which might help generate US$3 billion in three years for its asset management business. UBS Taiwan, which is to launch the service in July,… – Continue reading
A unit of Societe Generale SA based in Switzerland and three other banks agreed to pay a total of $2.2 million in penalties for helping American clients avoid taxes. The settlement comes under a U.S. program that lets Swiss banks avoid prosecution if they agree to cooperate with prosecutors and… – Continue reading
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced that four Swiss banks have reached a resolution with the Government under the DoJ Tax Division’s regularization program. The DoJ’s Swiss Bank Program was signed by the two countries on August 29, 2013. It provides a framework for Swiss banks that were… – Continue reading
Avago Technologies Ltd.’s pending takeover of Broadcom Corp. taps an arcane tax structure that has being dusted off amid a rise in cross-border mergers. Avago said it is prepared to offer Broadcom shareholders special partnership units that would defer any taxes triggered by the $37 billion tie-up, which was announced… – Continue reading
A South Florida man who ran a $15 million pill mill operation that sold hundreds of thousands of addictive painkillers to drug dealers and addicts was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in federal prison. Joel Shumrak, 67, of Boca Raton, has been locked up since June when federal agents raided… – Continue reading
It is not uncommon for affluent families from certain countries to maintain offshore structures to hold a portion, and often times a significant portion, of their wealth. The reasons for holding assets outside of their country of residence are many, and such assets are frequently held in foreign corporations. As… – Continue reading
CHARGES laid out by the United States Department of Justice on 14 high-ranking FIFA officials may never have come to a head had it not been for the behind the scenes workings of former FIFA executive Chuck Blazer. In 2011, after being confronted by the Internal Revenue Service in regards… – Continue reading
Thousands of Indian citizens in the US – from IT workers, health professionals, students and everyone else under the sun – will soon be innocent victims to snooping by the Indian government. If an Indian citizen holds a bank account in the US, minute details about his/her bank account will… – Continue reading
After Switzerland initiated measures to regulate its banks, most of the unaccounted money stashed in Swiss banks is suspected to have been diverted to countries like Mauritius and Singapore. The Special Investigation Team on black money has taken cognisance of the issue raised by the enforcement agencies. “Although the Swiss… – Continue reading
Many UK expats based in Portugal have retained their trusts, even though the Government introduced a tax of 28% on trust distributions from 1 January 2015. Despite the existence of several planning options, including an offshore bond, Jason Porter, director at advisory firm Blevins Franks, said many clients remained unaware… – Continue reading
Bern, Switzerland: As India tries to uncover who has stashed untaxed money abroad, Switzerland is, in an unusual deviation from its super-secretive banking rules, releasing the names of people who are being investigated for alleged tax evasion in their countries of origin. Among the seven Indians named so far by… – Continue reading
Tax affairs of billionaire Bulgari heirs Nicola and Paolo in the spotlight as authorities target luxury brands When Bulgari, the luxury Italian jeweller, set out to celebrate its 130-year anniversary last year at its flagship store on Rome’s Via Condotti – where Richard Burton once bought Elizabeth Taylor a suite… – Continue reading
Bangladesh Bank will take all possible measures to liberalise country’s foreign-exchange rules and regulations for attracting foreign investors to a number of proposed economic zones. The decision was taken at a meeting between the central bank and the Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA) at the BB headquarters Tuesday. Presided over… – Continue reading
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published its Base Erosion Profit Sharing (BEPS) action plan in July 2013 to address perceived flaws in international tax rules. The Plan was endorsed by G20 with implementation to be completed by the end of 2015. WRIN.tv spoke with John O’Leary, a… – Continue reading
Switzerland and the European Union have signed an agreement providing for the automatic exchange of banking information, effective 2018. On Wednesday, Swiss State Secretary for International Financial Matters Jacques de Watteville signed the accord in Brussels along with EU Tax Commissioner Pierre Moscovici and Latvian Finance Minister Janis Reirs. Before… – Continue reading
Former Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan, who is currently Armenia’s ambassador to the United States, has filed a lawsuit against former businessman Paylak Hayrapetyan with a demand that he refute the “libelous information” spread about him and pay 1 million AMD (about $2,100) in compensation for moral damages. Sargsyan demands Hayrapetyan,… – Continue reading
People with non-domiciled tax status living in the UK who wish to preserve the anonymity of their offshore finances must notify HMRC by 30 May, warns international law firm Pinsent Masons. Otherwise full details of their offshore accounts, trusts and companies held in Crown Dependencies or British Overseas Territories will… – Continue reading
