As tax filing season approaches, Canadians should watch their back in light of the new whistleblower initiatives of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), which will reward those who snoop into other people’s affairs and invade their privacy. Frustrated by cutbacks in staffing levels, the CRA has instead set up an… – Continue reading
It’s been five years since the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) became law and while the intentions were good – to crack down on those hiding money offshore and avoiding taxes, compliance comes at a price for individuals and corporations. “The upside of FATCA is that it is forcing… – Continue reading
Law360, New York (April 06, 2015, 4:47 PM ET) — Microsoft Corp. recently brought to light the IRS’ hiring of litigators from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP to assist with examining the tech company’s transfer pricing activities, and some tax professionals say the agency’s unprecedented move is troubling. In… – Continue reading
Interview with Partner and National Leader, Human Capital Services, EY India The Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets (Imposition of Tax) Bill, 2015, popularly called the “anti-black money bill” has been in the news for its stringent and sweeping provisions. Sonu Iyer, partner and national leader, human capital services, EY India,… – Continue reading
More and more Americans are opening offshore bank accounts. This article provides statistical details about why this is so, that offshore banking can be safe and legal and which banking jurisdictions are safest. Apr. 3, 2015 / PRZen / VALENCIA, Calif. — Offshore banking is growing in leaps and bounds… – Continue reading
Cross border tax fraud and tax evasion by High Net Wealth Individuals (HNWI) are serious problems for many jurisdictions. For many years exchange of information between countries has been solely upon request. In practise this procedure is not efficiently working as it requires foreseeable relevance, thus ‘fishing’ for information is… – Continue reading
There are over 100 countries around the world that are now “FATCA-compliant.” Mexico is one of the earlier Latin American countries to comply. This means that Mexican banks will be sending to the IRS specific information regarding accounts held by U.S. persons. In this article, we discuss how FATCA is… – Continue reading
Tough tax disclosure laws introduced by the former Labor Government represent “an invasion of privacy and intrusion for Australian private companies,” Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said. Abbott made the comment during a joint press conference with the Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. The press conference followed a meeting of the… – Continue reading
The recent cases of FCT v Darling [2014] FAM CAFC 59 (Darling) and International Litigation Partners Pte Ltd v FCT [2014] FCA 671 (Litigation Partners) have cast the spotlight on the Commissioner of Taxation’s (Commissioner) ability to access information from the contents of Family Court files in order to assist… – Continue reading
UK financial institutions (FIs) that have no US-reportable accounts will not be required to submit annual ‘nil returns’ in order to ensure compliance with new rules designed to prevent tax evasion by US citizens, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has confirmed. The change comes after the US Internal Revenue Service… – Continue reading
Tax Regulation Number PER-01/PJ/2015, which is supposed to be effective starting this year, has triggered controversy within the banking industry. This is mainly due to the new obligation for banks to disclose details on every customer’s tax payments on deposits or savings interest. The Finance Minister needed to postpone indefinitely… – Continue reading
Ras Al Khaimah, close to Dubai, is one of the fastest growing emirates in the United Arab Emirates. The emirate has also gained a reputation for being a transparent, tax free, corruption free, no red tape and inexpensive to do business jurisdiction. Ras Al Khaimah is the most popular offshore… – Continue reading
The call for tax transparency is being echoed around the globe, with ‘midshore’ centres like Bahrain and the UAE emerging as reputable, regulated and tax efficient jurisdictions A 2012 book entitled Offshore Apocalypse – The Collapse of the Tax Haven Industry, written by a team of tax-law academics, auditors, compliance… – Continue reading
Seychelles is one of the most popular offshore jurisdiction, with favourable business regulations, a prosperous economy and a stable political situation. Seychelles IBC, is a limited liability company which conducts its trading and business outside the Seychelles and is intended for offshore activities. It takes up to 2 days to… – Continue reading
ARLINGTON, Virginia, March 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Bloomberg BNA today announced an addition to its lineup of keynote speakers for the Global Transfer Pricing Conference: Paris, held in conjunction with Baker & McKenzie, on March 30-31 immediately after the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Forum on Transfer… – Continue reading
Are you an American abroad living in perpetual fear of the IRS? Do you wake up every morning wondering if today you’ll receive a formidable notice that the taxman cometh? You are not alone. Expats around the world are facing (and fearing) the painful reality that the IRS’s global tax… – Continue reading
FATCA is a law requiring every foreign bank to excessively monitor and report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) the bank accounts of every American residing overseas – or risk severe punishment. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Rand Paul reintroduced S.663, a bill to repeal the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act… – Continue reading
Senator Rand Paul said that the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act violates privacy rights of US citizens as well as has a bad effect on the American economy. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) violates privacy rights of US citizens as well as has a bad… – Continue reading
Billions of pounds of corruptly gained money has been laundered by criminals and foreign officials buying upmarket London properties through anonymous offshore front companies – making the city arguably the world capital of money laundering. Some 36,342 properties in London have been bought through hidden companies in offshore havens and… – Continue reading
Criminals, tax evaders, human traffickers and drug dealers have laundered billions of pounds worth of dirty money purchasing British properties through anonymous offshore companies, Scotland Yard investigators suspect. The Metropolitan Police say more than £180 million (US$276 million) worth of British property has been subject to criminal investigation since 2004… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: Opposition today came down heavily on the government accusing it of remaining silent over cases of communal violence and failing on national security front and stopping transfer of public money to foreign telecom firms Main opposition Congress party also charged the BJP-led dispenation with failing to make sufficient… – Continue reading
A foreign bank asks our client to provide information that the bank is not required to provide IRS under FATCA. There are two possibilities. Our client can provide the information or our client can choose not to provide the information. How should we advise our client? General Ethical Principles There… – Continue reading
ROME, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) — Italian Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan signed a treaty on Thursday with Liechtenstein Prime Minister and finance minister Adrian Hasler in Rome, a measure which abolishes bank secrecy. The agreement, which helps identify potential tax evaders, was fundamentally the same as the one signed between… – Continue reading
The British Virgin Islands is the most popular offshore jurisdiction, with favourable business regulations, a prosperous economy and a stable political situation. British Virgin Islands IBC, is a limited liability company which conducts its trading and business outside the British Virgin Islands and is intended for offshore activities. It takes… – Continue reading
Not long after the U.S. Department of Justice’s Tax Division (“DOJ”) made international headlines in 2009 for its bombshell announcement that it had entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS), lawmakers in Washington, D.C. began reviewing the testimony of hundreds of UBS’s U.S. clients… – Continue reading
PREMIER Rufus Ewing has called out United Kingdom Opposition Leader, Edward Miliband for published statements he recently made regarding the TCI being a tax haven. Miliband is reported in the UK press as stating that the UK overseas territories (OT) are not complying with UK directives on beneficial ownership of… – Continue reading
In a recent letter to the Committee on Foreign Relations, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) requested that the US Senate urgently approve all pending bilateral double taxation agreements (DTAs) and protocols. The AICPA pointed out that the full Senate has not approved any DTA or protocol since… – Continue reading
The Association of Americans Resident Overseas – AARO – recently conducted a 4 month survey to see how Americans with offshore financial accounts were adapting to the mandatory electronic FBAR filing regimen. For decades, U.S. taxpayers with offshore accounts had to paper file FBAR reports each June. Now, FBARs must… – Continue reading
ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 28, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Bloomberg BNA today announced that its Global Transfer Pricing Conference: Paris, held in conjunction with Baker & McKenzie and in association with the Tax Management Education Institute, will occur on March 30-31 immediately after the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global… – Continue reading
Jonathan Weiss hasn’t lived in the US for 25 years. But that didn’t keep his foreign bank account from being frozen in the wake of new US tax laws. Find out how you can avoid the same fate at the hands of FATCA. “I had been living in Switzerland for… – Continue reading
To comply with unconstitutional pseudo-treaties negotiated by the Obama administration without the consent of Congress or any semblance of constitutional authority, the IRS announced that it will be sharing private financial information on U.S. bank account holders with foreign powers. No warrant is needed for foreign governments or tyrants to… – Continue reading
The IRS has unveiled a secure web application, the International Data Exchange Service (IDES), for cross-border data sharing. IDES will allow Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) and tax authorities from other countries to transmit financial data on U.S. taxpayers’ accounts, via an encrypted pathway, to the IRS. The tool is part… – Continue reading
An update on the state of global wealth planning and reporting I recently sat down for a brief chat at our booth with Joan Crain, Senior Director and Wealth Strategist at BNY Mellon Wealth Management, and she had some interesting perspectives to share on global wealth planning in light of… – Continue reading
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) information exchange network has gone live and is receiving the first reports on the financial affairs of US taxpayers. The online network links tax authorities in 110 countries and more than 145,000 financial institutions with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Financial institutions outside… – Continue reading
Yesterday, the US Taxation Office (IRS) announced the International Data Exchange Service. If you’ve not heard of it, it’s is an outgrowth of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which requires every single bank in the world to get in bed with IRS to share information about customers. We’ve… – Continue reading
“The European Strategic Investment Plan is not the silver bullet. But if anyone has ideas to overcome the economic crisis with one stroke, stand up please,” said European Council President Donald Tusk in the debate on the results of the December European Council, which also covered tax avoidance and —… – Continue reading
A US criminal investigation into how Swiss banks helped wealthy Americans hide their money has had an unexpected side effect: shaking out scores of tax cheats among the Swiss themselves. Secrecy laws in Switzerland, the world’s largest offshore financial centre with trillions in assets, have been under siege in recent… – Continue reading
The Cayman Islands government announced it will not implement a central register of beneficial ownership information, but will continue its current method of providing this type of information to law enforcement, tax and regulatory authorities. At the same time, government proposes to enact new legislation that will improve access to… – Continue reading
The new year could bring important changes to the tax landscape. Here are several issues that will affect how much taxpayers owe for 2015 and beyond: Federal tax policy There is serious talk of overhauling the federal tax code. “There appears to be a consensus” on making changes, says Stephen… – Continue reading
Forbes is reporting on the Vatican Bank’s decision under pressure to comply with the FATCA requirements for reporting on American citizen accounts. In his annual Christmas messages to more than one billion Catholics, the Pope may have left out something: offshore account compliance. Maybe, but the U.S. Treasury is more… – Continue reading
Jakarta. A leading business lobby with strong ties to the administration of President Joko Widodo has called for a tax amnesty, in which the authorities will waive off past taxes and penalties to conglomerates and individuals parking billions of dollars worth of funds overseas, in a bid to reinvest that… – Continue reading
Ambassadors are supposed to be diplomatic and suave. Yet even those of the diplomatic corp may occasionally get tongue-tied or utter ill-timed statements. Take U.S. Ambassador to Britain Matthew Barzun. He recently sounded not all that diplomatic about duty, compliance with law, and yes, even taxes. Lee Rigby was a… – 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 wise thing is to forget the past, bring reforms to prevent generation of black money Considering other man’s point of view is Decency — George Orwell This quality seems to be in short supply in India although it is the most needed even to understand any black money retrieval…. – Continue reading
Financial institutions around the world including those in Asia are struggling to stay compliant with local privacy regulations that restrict the sharing of client data, whilst at the same time trying to meet the demands of costly FATCA reporting requirements. FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which came into… – Continue reading
The suspected leaker of documents that revealed confidential tax avoidance deals between Luxembourg and hundreds of multinational companies has been charged with theft, money-laundering and exposing trade secrets, prosecutors said. The suspect’s identity has not been revealed, but at Luxemburger Wort we have identified that he is a French former… – Continue reading
Ambassador to London Matthew Barzun says US citizens must pay up Boris Johnson was born in New York so faces a tax bill in America London Mayor has branded the Transatlantic rules ‘outrageous’ Barzun defends US firms like Amazon and Google over tax dodging Insists they are just playing by… – Continue reading
A new leak of confidential documents expands the list of big companies seeking secret tax deals in Luxembourg, exposing tax-saving maneuvers by American entertainment icon The Walt Disney Co., politically controversial Koch Industries Inc. and 33 other companies. Disney and Koch Industries, a U.S.-based energy and chemical conglomerate, both created… – Continue reading
Global regulators need to standardise the mechanisms by which financial institutions exchange tax information on their clients amid concern the number of tax information exchange agreements between various countries is spiraling out of control. This comes as a number of countries and global regulatory bodies introduce their own tax reporting… – Continue reading
Reversing earlier moves taken this summer and fall, a major international bank 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, such as Ireland or Switzerland. During a Zurich speech, Barclays bank executive… – Continue reading
