Inquiry to centre on George Osborne’s 2013 rule change that allows resident multinationals to shift income offshore The EU is to launch an investigation into a British government scheme that may help multinational firms pay less tax, the Guardian has learned. Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner, will announce on… – Continue reading
Treasury says individuals or corporations who take deliberate action to help others evade paying tax face steep fines. Tax advisers, accountants and lawyers who aid the super-rich with offshore tax evasion will face tough new penalties from New Year’s Day, with HMRC now able to publicly name and shame “enablers”…. – Continue reading
On the way to Brexit, Hammond adopts a more conciliatory negotiating position Britain’s post-Brexit Finance Minister, Philip Hammond, has buried a tax-dumping plan to slash the corporate tax introduced by his predecessor. Before his resignation in July, George Osborne announced plans to reduce British corporate tax to encourage investment to… – Continue reading
The taxman plans to crack down on people who hide earnings from offshore investments, with greater powers to impose tougher penalties. People who do not reveal income from foreign accounts and investments to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) could be hit with penalties of three times the amount of tax… – Continue reading
Tougher stance follows Theresa May’s leadership campaign promise to be more punitive of tax evasion and avoidance The Treasury is proposing new rules to punish offshore tax evaders who fail to come clean about their finances before September 2018, with fines of up to 200% of the amount owed. Published… – Continue reading
The political, economic and constitutional fallout of the UK’s referendum decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) will continue for some time. In addition to considering some of the possible domestic UK tax implications of Brexit, this OnPoint also considers some of the potential tax implications from the perspective of… – Continue reading
BRITAIN will thrive outside the European Union by using its influence to secure a strong trade deal, according to a senior economist. Dr Michael Ivanovitch said the Government has “huge leverage” in its trade negotiations after it triggers Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and leaves the union. He insisted… – Continue reading
Nearly half of people say the Prime Minister’s handling of his finances was ‘morally repugnant’, according to our opinion poll, and they support public tax returns for all As the fallout from the fallout from the Panama Papers leak begins to settle, the Prime Minister is left contemplating the damage… – Continue reading
The UK Government will bring forward plans to introduce a new criminal offense for companies that fail to prevent their staff from facilitating tax evasion. Prime Minister David Cameron said that the offense will be introduced in legislation this year. Cameron explained: “This Government has done more than any other… – Continue reading
A TAX loophole has been closed to stop Jersey developers avoiding or evading tax on profits made from UK property projects. The loophole, which was known as ‘The Island Handshake’, had been in existence since the 1950s and was used to make Jersey an ‘investment doorway’ for UK property development…. – Continue reading
Private equity (PE) populism looks to be in the news again – though in a context that’s unlikely to win too many votes for the instigators. This time it’s the UK, and Chancellor George Osborne’s latest budget. The UK Budget 2016 (the Budget) includes a significant reduction in the UK… – Continue reading
The amount people can earn before being hit by income tax will rise to £11,500 in April 2017, benefiting millions of workers. The move will cut taxes for 31 million people, according to the Treasury, and will mean 1.3 million low-wage workers are taken out of paying income tax altogether…. – Continue reading
The UK has been slammed over its failure to crackdown on British-controlled tax havens, with a new report claiming that the wealthiest one percent of the UK’s population have captured more than US$1.4 trillion of the country’s national growth since 2000. The report from Oxfam called on UK officials to… – Continue reading
For several years now Google has been facing what appears to be a case of tax avoidance in the UK, at some point in time, the company went as far saying it did not make any money from business in the UK all in a desperate attempt to pay less… – Continue reading
In Shanghai, Wolfgang Schäuble is urging his fellow G20 countries to put new rules to tackle tax avoidance into law. Back home, business leaders worry that German companies could be left exposed by the new rules if they are introduced unilaterally or go too far. The finance ministers of the… – Continue reading
A quiet revolution is taking place across Europe. It isn’t playing out on the streets of capital cities or in the debating chambers of national parliaments. It has been slowly happening with every newspaper headline about how little corporation tax some companies pay relative to their size. It is also… – Continue reading
The Chancellor has been pressed to take “urgent action” and cut the headline rate of tax for the struggling North Sea oil industry in his Budget next month. Deputy First Minister John Swinney has written to George Osborne highlighting the “substantial challenges” the sector is facing amid plummeting prices, and… – Continue reading
Google’s top global tax executive told U.K. lawmakers that a new U.K. tax provision dubbed “the Google Tax” will not actually apply to the U.S. technology giant. The law, officially the Diverted Profits Tax, was introduced last year amid concerns that Google parent Alphabet Inc. and other global tech companies… – Continue reading
Multinational companies operating in Europe will have to publicly disclose their earnings and the tax paid in each European country if new measures being proposed by the European Commission come into force, The Guardian has reported. The Commission will propose new legislation in April that makes profit and tax information… – Continue reading
Journalist Steve Topple investigates Bermuda-based big business tax avoidance and its links with UK political parties – and even some charities LAST WEEK saw the news emerge that everyone’s favourite search engine, Google, only had to pay £97m in back-tax (not the “major success” of £130m as was first reported)… – Continue reading
Revenue spike sees tech firm’s parent company, Alphabet, valued at $568bn – surpassing Apple’s valuation of $535bn Google has become the world’s most valuable listed company after announcing that its global revenues rose 13% to $75bn (£52bn) last year, and the group’s tax rate fell to just 17%. The group… – Continue reading
COMMUNIST trade union leader Ken Gill famously referred to taxation as “the price we pay for civilisation.” If so last week gave further evidence of just how uncivilised a country Britain has become after decades of neoliberalism. Google’s deal with HMRC has rightly prompted outrage and consternation at the sheer… – Continue reading
Tech company’s 2015 earnings will be announced next week as governments aim to crack down on Google’s controversial tax avoidance arrangements Google is poised to confirm next week that controversial tax structures in Ireland, the Netherlands and Bermuda have boosted its offshore cash mountain to more than $43bn (£30bn), figures… – Continue reading
Here’s a transaction that did the rounds some years ago. If I wanted some foreign exchange in the future I could enter into a contract with a bank by which it would sell me some. Assume that, in order to get a bank to promise to give me $2bn in… – Continue reading
Coinciding with the World Economic Forum in Davos this week Oxfam has issued a report – entitled An Economy for the 1% – outlining how wealth inequality has grown to the stage where 62 of the world’s richest people own as much as the poorest half of the world’s people… – Continue reading
LONDON: India and the UK today agreed to strengthen their economic cooperation in infrastructure and financial services as they vowed to address cross-border tax evasion and avoidance. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who held talks with his UK counterpart George Osborne as part of the 8th India-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue… – Continue reading
The automatic sharing of tax information between India and Britain scheduled to begin from 2017 is expected to figure in the Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD) between finance minister Arun Jaitley and chancellor George Osborne in London during January 18-19. Jaitley is scheduled arrive in London on a three-day visit… – Continue reading
Information from Reuters has brought to light the fact that five of the biggest banks operating in the UK (and worldwide) paid not a penny in corporation tax in 2014. Efforts to crack down on this kind of corporation tax avoidance have brought together Westminster’s political right and left. Deutsche… – Continue reading
A UK government body says the UK chancellor is getting £50 million a year less than he expected from a crown dependencies tax deal, reports Manx Radio. The Office for Budget Responsibility says the deal has brought in 20 per cent less cash from tax disclosure facilities that allow people… – Continue reading
Two more top banks getting away with paying NO corporation tax in the UK: Credit Suisse and Citigroup are latest to admit using previous losses to slash their bills Seven foreign investment banks in London now pay no corporation tax Fines and lawsuits used to slash their tax bills by… – Continue reading
Official Irish statistics are being fattened up by massive tax inversions and the re-registering of companies, warns Dan White The ESRI estimates that the Irish economy grew by 6.7pc in 2015 and is forecasting GDP growth of 4.8pc for this year. GNP, which is generally regarded as a better measurement… – Continue reading
Two more investment banks have reported paying zero tax in Britain in 2014, prompting the opposition Labour party to urge the government to reverse a tax change it made for banks last year. Citigroup and Credit Suisse disclosed in the past fortnight that their main UK subsidiaries paid no corporate… – Continue reading
Multinational companies have enjoyed a sustained period of falling corporate tax rates around the world. However, with the conclusion of the OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting project earlier this year marking the start of fundamental changes to the international tax system, and with governments more determined than ever to… – Continue reading
The Office for Budget Responsibility says some areas of scheme are underperforming compared to expectations George Osborne’s plan to crack down on tax avoidance has fallen £600m short of its hearalded benefits, according to an analysis by a Government watchdog. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said in an analysis… – Continue reading
Current system viewed as unfair and too easy to circumvent Abolition of corporation tax is to be considered by a new cross-party group of MPs and peers who will subject ministers and business leaders to public interrogations in a bid to secure fairer and more responsible tax policies. The all-party… – Continue reading
Netflix the online movie rental service did not pay any UK corporation tax last year, despite generating an income of £200million in Britain. The world’s biggest internet movie streaming service has five million subscribers in the UK alone and has proved a hit by offering U.S. shows like House of… – Continue reading
Meg Hillier has a tough act to follow. This parliament’s Public Accounts Committee chairwoman had a ringside seat watching her predecessor, Margaret Hodge, tear into tax avoiders and the tax man. “It is very exciting – you see all the guts of Whitehall spilled out in front of you,” she… – Continue reading
Trigger for prosecution will be loss to HMRC of £25,000 a year, up from £5,000 – but experts say legislation is ‘step too far’ Government plans to make offshore tax evasion a criminal offence even when there is no proof of intention to break the law have been softened under… – Continue reading
With a new tax on company dividends coming into force from April 2016, a financial planner explains how Britons overseas will be affected, and what steps they should take Investors who receive more than £5,000 from company dividends held outside tax-efficient plans such as Isas will pay more tax from… – Continue reading
The Treasury was forced to defend this week’s Autumn Statement and Spending Review announcements last night after the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), an independent research institute, said there was just a 50-50 chance Osborne would hit his target of a surplus in 2019-2020. While saying the government will… – Continue reading
Amid all the diplomatic comings and goings on Syria and how to tackle Islamic State, an important but little-noticed high-level gathering has been taking place in London. The Overseas Territories were holding the fourth meeting of their Joint Ministerial Council at Lancaster House. Leaders from Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands,… – Continue reading
Holiday home owners and others who inadvertantly break new tax rules could be ‘criminalised’ Holiday home owners who miscalculate tax owed, and those inheriting offshore money, face having their income wiped out entirely due to new penalties and punishments being introduced in the New Year. HM Revenue & Customs has… – Continue reading
The House of Lords has recently criticised the speed of further devolution of powers to Scotland, but nevertheless the Scotland Bill is progressing through the UK parliament. Devolution more widely across the UK is a direction of travel in this Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. Among the announcements, George Osborne said that… – Continue reading
HMRC introduces new measures to tackle tax avoidance The Chancellor has introduced a new penalty equal to 60% of tax due for all cases successfully tackled by the General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR). The GAAR was introduced in 2013 as part of the government’s attempt to crack down on tax abuse…. – Continue reading
The extra corporate tax collected by tax inspectors targeting the UK’s largest businesses fell 13 per cent last year to £3.5bn, according to new figures, reports the Financial Times. Heather Self, a partner at Pinsent Masons, international law firm, said the decline was likely to be a sign that HMRC… – Continue reading
Professional services firm PwC has predicted that UK Chancellor George Osborne will introduce an “apprenticeship levy” and seek to lessen the impact of tax credit cuts when he delivers his Autumn Statement on November 25. In his Summer Budget, Osborne pledged that the Government would “introduce an apprenticeship levy on… – Continue reading
The North will have its own 12.5pc corporate tax rate from 2018. This means that it will compete harder against the Republic for FDI projects, writes Dan White The 12.5pc company tax rate will no longer be confined to the southern part of the island. Last week’s ‘Fresh Start’ agreement… – Continue reading
The Chancellor could target capital gains tax for extra revenue when he delivers his Autumn Statement next week as gains from investors and landlords hit their highest on record in the past financial year, accountants suggest. George Osborne, who will unveil his spending plans for Britain next Wednesday, is under… – Continue reading
Plans that would effectively end the UK’s non-domicile status for tax purposes have the potential to do more harm than good and could be contrary to EU law, according to the Institute of Chartered Accountants. The changes, announced by chancellor George Osborne in the 2015 summer budget, mean that non-UK… – Continue reading
The British Bankers Association (BBA) has warned that the UK’s attractiveness as an international banking center is being eroded, and has called on the Government to review the tax treatment of the sector, reports Tax News. The BBA said that urgent action is needed if the UK is to remain… – Continue reading
