High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. Brussels has widened a probe into corporate tax rulings to include all 28 member states amid heightened scrutiny of sweetheart tax deals granted to businesses by national… – Continue reading
While the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) has focused worldwide attention on U.S. efforts to create a mandatory cross-border exchange of tax information, the enactment of FATCA was not an isolated occurrence. For more than a decade, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been trying to… – Continue reading
December 17: The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) today finalised the transfer pricing ruling TR 2014/8, outlining the Commissioner’s views on the application of the recordkeeping provisions in Subdivision 284-E of Schedule 1 to the Taxation Administration Act 1953 (Subdivision 284-E). Taxpayers need to adequately address the requirements of Subdivision 284-E… – Continue reading
FATCA causes foreign banking and financial institutions to place priority on information sharing practices and procedures. Foreign banks, financial institutions, and U.S. taxpayers living abroad are being advised to show a strong “good faith” effort in complying with the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act. Passed in 2010, the law requires… – Continue reading
December 17: The Dutch Ministry of Finance announced that a new regulation for the avoidance of double taxation between the Netherlands and Curaçao is expected to be effective beginning 1 January 2016. The Dutch government bill concerning this regulation is pending consideration by the Lower House. Once approved, the bill… – Continue reading
If we make America the world’s most favored tax haven, money will flow to the USA. Talk of overhauling the tax code is stirring in Washington, but the overwhelming complexity of the task makes it difficult to accomplish, at least in the near term. Here’s a good, clean, quick way… – Continue reading
An investigation into tax rulings provided by certain EU member states is to be widened to cover all member states, according to a press release from the European Commission.17 Dec 2014 Tax Disputes and Investigations EU & Competition Tax Public procurement and state aid Corporate tax International tax UK Europe… – Continue reading
Some have called it the most important state and local tax case that the United States Supreme Court has heard in 20 years. The case is Maryland v. Wynne and it concerns the extent to which a state must provide credits for taxes paid to other states. The Wynnes, shareholders… – Continue reading
The European Union’s probe of sweetheart fiscal deals expanded as EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager asked all EU countries to provide information about tax accords with multinationals. The EU is seeking lists of every company granted a tax ruling from 2010 to 2013, the European Commission said today in an… – Continue reading
Companies will be forced to disclose their ultimate owners on national registers in European Union nations as the bloc seeks to clamp down on tax dodging, money laundering and terrorism financing. European Parliament legislators and representatives of 28 EU national governments struck a deal late yesterday to upgrade the bloc’s… – Continue reading
The FACT (Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency) Coalition today submitted comments to the Treasury Department praising their previous actions to limit inversions while also calling for additional measures. The proposals come as a part of the open comment period for Notice 2014-52, Rules Regarding Inversions and Related Transactions, originally issued… – Continue reading
To check illicit financial flows across borders, the government is renegotiating bilateral treaties with many countries to limit tax benefits to genuine investments and curb the routing of Indian money to safe havens, a senior Finance Ministry official said on Wednesday. While noting that the quantum of domestic black money… – Continue reading
The head of the Australian Tax Office, Chris Jordan, has described a tax lurk for multinational companies that is being retained by the Abbott government as having been “abused” by foreign corporations at a cost of “hundreds of millions of dollars” a year to the Commonwealth. As revealed by Fairfax… – Continue reading
The ultimate owners of companies would have to be listed in central registers in EU countries, accessible to people with a “legitimate interest”, such as investigative journalists and other concerned citizens, under a deal struck by Parliament and Council negotiators on a draft EU anti-money laundering directive on Tuesday. The… – Continue reading
A tax based on turnover penalises companies that hang on to their profits ro reinvest in the business One week it is Starbucks. The week afterwards it is Amazon. And the week after that it is Apple or Vodafone. The names in the headlines might change from time to time…. – Continue reading
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has secured almost all of the disputed tax due from the first group of tax avoidance scheme users to receive the controversial Accelerated Payment notices. About 30 scheme users were told in late August they had 90 days to pay a total of around £29… – Continue reading
(CNS Business): The British government has published draft legislation for a new Diverted Profits Tax (DPT), dubbed the “Google tax”, by which it intends to sidestep Britain’s existing tax treaties with low-tax jurisdictions by levying a charge that would fall outside the corporate tax system. The government hopes to raise… – Continue reading
* EU to examine tax arrangements across bloc * Several deals with multinationals already under scrutiny * Questions asked of new Commission President Juncker (Adds Luxembourg reaction, background) By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS, Dec 17 (Reuters) – European Union competition regulators have asked all 28 member countries for details of… – Continue reading
Think tank targets key aspects of Republic’s role in multinationals’ tax affairs Key features of Ireland’s role in the tax affairs of major technology companies such as Google and Microsoft are being targeted by the OECD’s base-erosion and profit-shifting (Beps) project, it has emerged. Ideas being worked on by the… – Continue reading
Singapore’s Ministry of Finance say both parties enjoy “excellent cooperation” regarding tax matters, and have agreed to update the existing Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreement as the next step. SINGAPORE: The Republic and Indonesia will be looking to increase cooperation on the sharing of tax information in the coming days,… – Continue reading
Last March MEPs voted overwhelmingly to introduce a new transparency disclosure rule that would compel all 28 European states to make publicly accessible the real owners of companies and trusts. The decision was hailed as a major breakthrough by anti-corruption campaigners fighting financial crime and tax abuse. Lawyers working for… – Continue reading
Unlike China, Japan‘s manufacturing activities rose in December. Flash PMI from HSBC came out at 52.1, up from 52 in November. A reading over 50 signals expansion. Meanwhile, the Nikkei newspaper reported that Japan’s government is considering lowering the corporate tax rate by 2.5 percentage points starting next April. Among… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: Bilateral investment treaties that the government will enter into from now on will have a provision preventing foreign investors to drag India to arbitration on any issues that have been settled by a judicial authority. Wiser from being dragged to arbitration in numerous cases, such as the Vodafone… – Continue reading
Defending the interests of the Swiss banking industry has not been the easiest challenge in recent years, particularly when it comes to tax. The role has fallen for the last five years to Patrick Odier, chairman of the Swiss Bankers’ Association (SBA), which has 317 institutional members and about 18,500… – Continue reading
South Africa is losing roughly R147-billion a year to the illegal movement of money out of the country. South Africa is losing roughly R147-billion per year to the illegal movement of money out of the country. This is according to a report by international monitoring organisation, Global Financial Integrity (GFI),… – Continue reading
On 2 December 2014 the Cyprus finance minister and the American ambassador to Cyprus formally signed the intergovernmental agreement (“IGA”) between Cyprus and the USA under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”), an American tax measure enacted in 2010 with the purpose of implementing mechanisms designed to prevent and… – Continue reading
With regards to the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA); the Caribbean Association of Banks (CAB) has strongly urged governments in the region, who have yet to complete the process towards a signed Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with the USA to do so prior to 31 December, 2014. FATCA was… – Continue reading
Is it a straw in the wind? Last week’s report on tax reform from the Republican staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance has caused a flutter in the global expat community. Page 282 contained these words: “The United States is the only industrialized country in the world that… – Continue reading
December 16: The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) today released two discussion drafts under the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project that focus on transfer pricing aspects—specifically under BEPS Action 10 (“Assure that transfer pricing outcomes are in line with value creation” in relation to “other high… – Continue reading
While the media has been feasting on Lux Leaks and other stories of “multinational tax dodging”, academic accountants have determined that U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) have no particular tax advantage over U.S. domestic firms. In fact, a new study finds the average effective tax rate for U.S. MNCs is slightly… – Continue reading
HONG KONG (CNNMoney) — He left America at the age of seven, has never earned a penny there, but might owe the U.S. government $6,000 in taxes. Meet Elad Shahar, who was born in 1969 to Israeli parents in New York when his father was posted there for work. Anybody… – 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
On December 1, 2014, Treasury and the IRS issued Announcement 2014-38 which provides relief to those countries which have reached FATCA Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) in substance, but have not signed such agreements. Background In 2012, Treasury and the IRS released Model 1 and Model 2 IGAs to implement the Foreign… – Continue reading
Abu Dhabi, 16th December, 2014 (WAM) – The Central Bank of the UAE organized a workshop on the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), to which banks and other financial institutions in the UAE were invited, on Monday, 15 December 2014 at its Head Office in Abu Dhabi. Squire… – Continue reading
Kenya was conned of more than Sh78 billion through corruption and tax evasion between 2003 and 2012, a US-based research firm has reported. Researchers from Global Financial Integrity (GFI) compiled the losses, which they describe as “modest” considering gaps in information, but could be bigger than all mega-scandals, including Goldenberg,… – Continue reading
Romanian authorities have dismantled a tax evasion network suspected of cheating the treasury out of 27 million euros ($34 million), prosecutors said Monday. Police raided around 40 locations in the greater Bucharest area and in the northeast as part of the crackdown on a group suspected of also embezzling 20… – Continue reading
Vodafone India’s tax problems have once again worsened after a tribunal arbitrating a dispute ruled last week that the tax authorities have the power to demand the operator pay tax in a transfer-pricing case. The case involves the sale of a call-centre business back in 2007, from which the country’s… – Continue reading
The European Union’s new antitrust chief said the EU is braced for a legal battle with governments embroiled in its probe of sweetheart tax deals for multinationals from Apple Inc. (AAPL:US) to Amazon.com Inc. Margrethe Vestager said the process needs to be legally watertight as officials investigate whether deals handed… – Continue reading
Proposals which would introduce automatic criminal penalties for those who fail to declare taxable offshore income may “quietly disappear” following their omission from draft clauses for the 2015 Finance Bill published for consultation, an expert has said.15 Dec 2014 Tax Disputes and Investigations Tax Corporate tax Private wealth tax UK… – Continue reading
(CNS Business): Barclays Bank’s Swiss operations is ending its cooperation with the Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to prevent investors from investing money in foreign countries with more amenable tax structures and policies. During a Zurich speech, Barclays bank executive Francesco Grosoli announced that the firm’s Swiss operations had “recently exited… – Continue reading
(MENAFN – Arab News) Ernst & Young one of the world’s leading professional services organizations hosted the 12th annual tax seminar on recent updates on Saudi Arabian zakat regulations and corporate income tax Law and its bye-laws in Jeddah on Thursday. Over 100 executives bankers and accountants attended this Seminar…. – Continue reading
If tax crimes remain civil in nature, foreign governments will not cooperate,” M.B. Shah, chairman of the Special Investigation Team on black money, said. Tax evasion needs to be made a serious “criminal offence” to force foreign countries to reveal names and account details of Indians stashing illicit wealth abroad,… – Continue reading
Armenia’s Central Bank (CB) claims thatsome data regarding money flows to and from offshore financial centers is protected from public disclosure under the law. We say ‘some’, because the CB is being selective when it comes to which information can be disclosed and what cannot. When Hetq contacted the CB,… – Continue reading
The latest World Bank quarterly report on Indonesia’s economy estimates that 50 percent of tax potential in the country remains untapped, causing the tax ratio — tax receipts as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) — to be very low at only 12 percent, among the lowest in the… – Continue reading
The debate on the goods and services tax (GST) in India has now grown beyond the merits of the tax and forayed into the question of its proper implementation. The unanimous support for the idea of a national tax seems to be based on the benefits of a nation-wide, single… – Continue reading
MUMBAI: The capital market regulator has plugged the loophole that allowed savvy mutual fund investors to lower tax by bonus stripping. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has spelt out that it’s not in favour of fund houses launching new schemes with bonus option in their arbitrage funds…. – Continue reading
Something strange happened in 2014 — Americans became very interested in corporate tax policy. It started in the spring, when U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which produces blockbuster drugs like Lipitor and Viagra, floated a possible merger with its British-based rival AstraZeneca. Normally a merger of that size would make a… – Continue reading
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has pocketed £32 million after demanding early payments of disputed tax from investors in suspected avoidance schemes. The taxman says this equates to 99% of disputed tax from the first tax avoidance scheme users to be issued with accelerated payment notices. HMRC said that 30… – Continue reading
A new standard that would help stamp out tax evasion by forcing multinationals to give governments details about their tax affairs has been uncosted by Treasury, the latest budget update shows. Under a plan agreed to at the G20 finance ministers meeting in Cairns held earlier this year and then… – Continue reading
Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL) allegedly negotiated a secret deal with the Swiss government when James Packer was chief executive officer, which set a tax rate of less than 2.15 per cent for the media group’s intra-company loans, The Australian Financial Review reports. According to correspondence obtained by the newspaper,… – Continue reading
