The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC, 金管會) said it is updating regulations on bank mergers for an announcement by the end of May. FSC Chairman William Tseng (曾銘宗) said the commission is studying bank merger regulations that could facilitate the formation of large-scale institutions that compete better in the Asia-Pacific region…. – Continue reading
The Central Board of Direct Taxes [CBDT] on 26th March 2015 issued a Circular no. 4/2015 wherein they have clarified that while interpreting the provisions of Section 9(1)(i) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 [herein after referred to as ‘Act’] read with Explanation 5 inserted to the said section by… – Continue reading
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act is meeting with some success in prompting foreign banks to disclose the holdings of U.S. taxpayers to the Internal Revenue Service, according to a former IRS official. FATCA was included as part of the HIRE Act of 2010 and requires foreign financial institutions to… – Continue reading
Dropbox has become the latest technology firm to skirt local tax rates after confirming it will bill its customers from a company set up in Ireland. In an email sent to users on the weekend, Dropbox confirmed it would bill its international users using the entity Dropbox Ireland from June…. – Continue reading
Sofia. Judicial proceedings against Bulgarian politician Hristo Biserov is terminated and returned to the Prosecutor’s Office to remove breaches in the factual part, the press office of Sofia City Court announced. The order is subject to appeal and protest before the Sofia Court of Appeal in 7 days of service… – Continue reading
Cracking down on sweetheart tax deals with multinational corporations is proving more difficult than the European Commission had anticipated. Delays, uncooperative member states, and missed deadlines are among the frustrations highlighted Tuesday (5 May) by the EU’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager. Speaking at a special committee on tax rulings at… – Continue reading
US fast-food giant McDonald’s could be facing a European Commission (EU) investigation into its tax affairs. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said she is looking into trade union allegations that the restaurant chain avoided paying more than €1bn (£658m; $1.1bn) in corporate taxes between 2009 and 2013. Unions claim McDonald’s… – Continue reading
Group of wealthy expats facing prison for failing to declare property purchases in Marbella A NETWORK of foreign businessmen and lawyers are facing 48 years in prison for tax evasion on the Costa del Sol. The group are to go on trial for using offshore companies to avoid paying taxes… – Continue reading
A federal judge demanded to know more about HSBC Holdings Plc’s compliance with its trade sanctions and anti-money-laundering deal with the U.S. after a monitor said the bank was “too slow” to mend its ways. U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, New York, ordered the government to file a… – Continue reading
Authorities in Milan said on Monday that they have detained a former Swiss banker for allegedly helping wealthy Italian clients evade taxes and launder large sums of money, including the proceeds of embezzlement. Italian financial police (Guardia di Finanza) from Varese northwest of Milan said that Filippo Dollfus, a former… – Continue reading
Bermuda is listed as 14th in a survey of the world’s biggest tax havens, by a US activist non-profit organisation. The Global Citizen organisation placed the Island just ahead of Guernsey in the Channel Islands to round its 15-strong list — well behind the US, UK and number one spot… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI:Money makes the mare go, and it seems to have gone. From 2012 through 2014, overseas investment by Indians grew by an astonishing 700 per cent in the British Virgin Islands, a favourite tax haven for biz pashas with big bucks. After Narendra Modi — whose war was to… – Continue reading
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has given the Senate inquiry into tax avoidance a blueprint on how to properly calculate the amount of tax multinationals should be paying each year on their Australian operations. A critical new methodology provided to the inquiry by the ATO, and seen by the ABC,… – Continue reading
MADRID (Reuters) – Herve Falciani, a former HSBC employee who leaked information on the bank’s clients and tax situation, told Spanish newspaper El Mundo he had knowledge of other cases and could act again, adding his “work was not done”. Falciani previously said that media leaks on HSBC accounts held… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI:Investment made by individuals or other entities may not have broken the law or acted improperly to hide details, details of investments made in famous tax haven countries or countries with little to offer besides registration of mail box entities are indeed intriguing. For example, total investment to Switzerland… – Continue reading
Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said he expects a slump in reinsurance results in the coming decade as investors enter the market. “It’s a business whose prospects have turned for the worse and there’s not much we can do about it,” Buffett said Saturday at his… – Continue reading
With its enviable reputation in offshore trusts, pensions and insurance, Bermuda is an ideal jurisdiction for employers to establish international pension and employee benefit plans (IPPs). Global organisations may consider establishing Bermuda IPPs for employees who work outside their home country or the home country of both the employees and… – Continue reading
Interpreting corporate tax data shouldn’t be like playing “Where’s Waldo.” Analysts seeking to understand whether big corporations are engaged in tax-avoidance hijinks should be aided, not thwarted, by the information that companies make available in their annual financial reports. A long-brewing effort to require country-by-country (CbC) reporting of corporate income… – Continue reading
Singapore is not a tax haven, it’s a value-adding hub. That is the claim of the island nation’s Economic Development Board, the Singaporean government agency that’s been charged with attracting business and investment. It has disputed recent claims at the Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance that it’s being used… – Continue reading
Hong Kong’s Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, K C Chan confirmed that the Government and regulators remain fully committed to combating money laundering and tax evasion, following the latest reports of foreign banks being used to open offshore accounts. In response to a question in the Legislative Council,… – Continue reading
Deferring income helped the billionaire hedge fund manager build his fortune George Soros likes to say the rich should pay more taxes. A substantial part of his wealth, though, comes from delaying them. While building a record as one of the world’s greatest investors, the 84-year-old billionaire used a loophole… – Continue reading
Hong Kong (HKSAR) – Following is a question by the Hon Frederick Fung and a written reply by the Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Professor K C Chan, in the Legislative Council today (April 29): Question: It has been reported that an investigation conducted jointly by an international… – Continue reading
The regulations require reporting FIs to notify TIA if they have reporting obligations under US FATCA and/or UK CDOT. With respect to US FATCA, Reporting FIs have until tomorrow (April 30th) to file their notification with an initial reporting deadline May 31st. With respect to UK CDOT, Reporting FIs have… – Continue reading
With the Delhi High Court to resume hearing on Wednesday on the Rs.20.495 crore tax case slapped on Cairn India, experts voiced the apprehensions of foreign investors about an adversarial tax regime. “Foreign investors expect stability and clarity in tax policy, which has been coming from the top with the… – Continue reading
Asks Jaitley why the govt not keen to avail of German offer to share info on offshore accounts Former Union Law minister and senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani on Tuesday put the Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on the witness box and slapped him with a dozen questions on the Narendra… – Continue reading
They are even engaging in strong-arm tactics with US account holders Swiss banks, for decades the bastions of secrecy, are preaching the virtue of transparency to their US clients as they try to head off billions of dollars in potential fines for helping Americans evade taxes. Faced with the threat… – Continue reading
Premier Michael Dunkley spoke at a recent Transcontinental Trusts Conference forum here on the island, the first time that the conference’s flagship event has been held outside of Europe in 30 years. In his remarks, Premier Dunkley said, “As this is the leading trust event for private client professionals, our… – Continue reading
Can you trust a company to run a clean and profitable coal mine when its financial controller has a case of the vagues? If the testimony of Adani executives in the witness box in the past few days is any indication, the prospects for Australia’s biggest coal project are not… – Continue reading
A bill that could allow the state to collect taxes on corporate profits in offshore tax havens to fund Colorado schools survived a narrow party-lane vote in the state House of Representatives on Tuesday. The Democrats’ bill, which passed the House 33-31, faces a tough road as it moves from… – Continue reading
One million American citizens in Canada face double tax troubles. Max Reed explores these challenges in a spring series. The United States has two tools with which to collect information on accounts held by its citizens, FATCA and FBAR. Lots of attention has been paid to FATCA, less so to… – Continue reading
Sofia. At the request of the Commission for Establishing Property Acquired from Criminal Activity Sofia City Court levied distraint on property of former MP Htristo Biserov and his step-son Ivaylo Glavinkov, worth BGN 1,555,883, the press office of the commission announced, as cited by the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR). The… – Continue reading
April 24 — Pressure is increasing on the Treasury Department to address concerns over language in the anti-inversions Notice 2014-52 that experts say could hurt the ability of foreign insurers to take part in commonplace business combination deals. “This has had an impact not only on foreign insurance companies, but… – Continue reading
Island Delegation to Tout Jurisdiction as Risk Capital and Potential e-Commerce Hub HAMILTON, Bermuda, April 27, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — A 15-strong delegation of Bermuda industry, government and regulator representatives will take part in a Canada roadshow next week, targeting top-level executives and touting the corporate benefits of setting up… – Continue reading
Mr Le Pen allegedly hid gold bars and cash worth £1.57 million in an account with a Swiss bank in the Bahamas, according to the latest leak from corruption investigations into the Front National Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the French far-Right Front National, hid €2.2 million (£1.57m) in… – Continue reading
BHP Billiton is contesting $522 million in Australian tax bills on its Singapore marketing operations up to 2010, after having paid almost no tax in Singapore since 2006, the global miner told an Australian Senate panel. The figures were released on Monday by a Senate committee that is investigating corporate… – Continue reading
International finance centres (IFCs) are frequently used to structure Russian inward and outward investment and it has been observed that in 2012, 11 of the 40 main recipients of Russian FDI were IFCs1. The BVI is at the forefront of offshore investment into Russia, and the share of outward FDI… – Continue reading
Americans have overcome oligarchy before — and there’s no reason we can’t do it again. Rising inequality seems to pose an insurmountable political problem. If the underlying causes are technological change and globalization, the forces appear to be unstoppable. Alternatively, if the causes are primarily political and involve the power… – Continue reading
The world’s high and ultrahigh net worth families are run much like businesses these days, with family governance in place as well as fund structures in favourable tax jurisdictions that allow for consolidated reporting across diversified assets. That is the way the world is moving, with global tax authorities grouping… – Continue reading
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the IRS are opposing bankrupt billionaire Samuel Wyly’s motion to sell his Woody Creek ranch because they believe he would hide sales proceeds in offshore accounts, according to court filings made earlier this month. Wyly, who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Oct. 19… – Continue reading
Across the state and nation this past month, individuals filed and paid their personal federal and state income taxes. However, there was one notable exception — the Fortune 500 companies singled out in a recent Citizens for Tax Justice report called “Fifteen Reasons Why we need Corporate Tax Reform.” This… – Continue reading
European finance ministers have backed efforts to fight rampant tax avoidance by multinationals in the wake of the LuxLeaks scandal. But European Union members face tough negotiations to work out the details. Under a new plan the bloc’s 28 countries would share tax deals agreed with some of the world’s… – Continue reading
On March 30, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had entered into a nonprosecution agreement with BSI SA, the first Swiss bank to reach resolution with the U.S. government as to its potential criminal exposure for assisting its U.S. clients in engaging in tax evasion.[1] As part… – Continue reading
Sarao made about $40m in profit using spoofing techniques that involve putting in an order and swiftly withdrawing it before a trade can take place Washington/London: The west London trader charged with contributing to a sudden crash in US equity markets five years ago set up companies in the Caribbean… – Continue reading
The tax status of (usually well-heeled) long-term foreign residents in the United Kingdom hit the headlines again recently as the opposition Labour Party pledged to abolish the non-domicile tax rules if its wins the general election on May 7. At least, that seemed to be the message when Labour leader… – Continue reading
In what is becoming an increasingly used attack vehicle, the Department of Justice (DoJ) is using the “required records doctrine” to compel taxpayer’s to produce what may be incriminating evidence of ownership or control of foreign financial accounts. The DoJ process involves the issuance of a Grand Jury subpoena for… – Continue reading
Sofia. The Silistra District Court ruled on April 3, 2015, that United Bulgarian Bank (UBB) and DSK Bank should pay offshore company (and sham creditor of Bross Holding) DC & Chem Co BGN 1,305,005.24 each for the remuneration of the legal adviser appointed by the offshore company, the Capital weekly… – Continue reading
PANAMA CITY (AP) — – Panama took a major step in an effort to clean up its reputation as Latin America’s premier hub for money laundering. The nation’s legislature late Wednesday unanimously approved a proposed law that will toughen supervision of more than a dozen non-financial sectors where illicit proceeds… – Continue reading
Panama took a major step in an effort to clean up its reputation as Latin America’s premier hub for money laundering, reports the AP. The nation’s legislature late Wednesday unanimously approved a proposed law that will toughen supervision of more than a dozen non-financial sectors where illicit proceeds from the… – Continue reading
In This Issue: • It’s Stifling in Here! SEC Rules That Companies Can’t Put Restrictive Language in Confidentiality Agreements That Could Potentially Stifle Whistleblowers • An Opinion on Opinions: U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Omnicare • Is OFAC the New Black? Schlumberger and PayPal—The Rise in the Enforcement of Sanctions… – Continue reading
The Cyprus Investment Promotion Agency (CIPA) is urging parliament to expedite a batch of bills aimed at facilitating much-needed foreign investment in Cyprus. Chief among the proposals are the establishment of foreign leasing companies and cell companies, opening up the professional provident fund business to foreign concerns, and updating company… – Continue reading
