Global banks may feel that purging their correspondent banking relationships will help them de-risk, but they should beware the unintended consequences. The Central Bank of Seychelles’ rescue of BMI Offshore Bank in November is one of the clearest examples of the impact global banks are having on smaller financial institutions… – Continue reading
The medical device manufacturer Medtronic has launched a USD17bn bond to finance part of its USD43bn corporate inversion acquisition of Ireland-based Covidien, in replacement of the cash held by its foreign subsidiaries that it was prevented from using following the United States Department of Treasury’s announcement of anti-inversion measures in… – Continue reading
AMP chief executive Craig Meller has launched an aggressive defence of the company’s international taxation arrangements after the financial services giant was named among some of the world’s biggest multinationals that allegedly channelled funds through Luxembourg to minimise their tax bills. The recent meeting of the G20 leaders in Brisbane… – Continue reading
PUBLIC Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman John McGuinness has confirmed that the Revenue Commissioners will this week be quizzed over the explosive Ansbacher dossier. Representatives from the tax authority will be questioned by TDs over an investigation carried out into allegations of widespread tax evasion by a number of former senior… – Continue reading
Offshore accounts have made headlines recently, with 51 global jurisdictions agreeing to automatically share and exchange details of tax data. Included in this agreement is information on offshore accounts and their operational procedures. The decision brings new attention to overseas financial planning, and how top companies use offshore accounts to… – Continue reading
Scottish Widows is considering the sale of offshore investment and tax planning business Clerical Medical International, the Financial Times reports. The Isle of Man-based business, acquired by Lloyds Banking Group as part of the HBOS deal in 2008, currently manages around £5bn in policyholder funds. The Isle of Man-based business,… – Continue reading
Top cable firm, lawmaker allegedly stashed funds in Swiss accounts Argentina’s top cable-TV operator, a former professional soccer player and a lawmaker are among the holders of some 4,000 secret Swiss bank accounts used to evade taxes, the Argentine tax agency said on Friday. The agency’s revelation came a day… – Continue reading
Lloyds Banking Group’s insurance arm Scottish Widows has put its offshore investment and tax planning business up for sale in the latest sign that dealmaking in the sector is heating up. Several parties have expressed an interest in the Isle of Man-based operation, which manages about £5bn of policyholders’ funds,… – Continue reading
Pascal Soriot has said that controversial inversion tax deals, branded ‘unpatriotic’ by President Obama, are still taking place despite attempts to curb the practice AstraZeneca’s chief has said inversion deals used by US companies to escape high taxes at home are not over despite a major clampdown on the practice…. – Continue reading
The revelations that global and multinational businesses have been brokering “secret” tax deals with Luxembourg to avoid paying taxes in their home countries, may be the first time an entire country has been implicated in tax avoidance collusion. A cache of leaked agreements uncovered by the International Consortium of Investigative… – Continue reading
* Sistema’s Q3 net income down 71.5 percent * CEO says reporting period “most challenging” (Recasts, adds detail, CEO quotes) Nov 27 (Reuters) – Russian conglomerate Sistema is reviewing its costs, portfolio of investments and future plans, it said on Thursday, after a drop in profits and a “challenging” year… – Continue reading
Hal Hicks cleared his throat and addressed a roomful of peers in a midtown Manhattan auditorium. The topic: the tax-avoidance technique called inversion, in which a U.S. company claims a foreign legal address. Waving his hands back and forth as if tracing a pendulum’s swing, Hicks explained how four government… – Continue reading
Public accounts committee will demand intricate details from Kevin Nicholson about tax avoiding schemes in Grand Duchy One of Britain’s top tax advisers at PricewaterhouseCoopers has been summoned to give evidence before MPs in the wake of revelations about controversial tax deals for PwC clients in Luxembourg. Kevin Nicholson, PwC… – Continue reading
Bank Leumi Le Israel (LUMI) BM is close to a $400 million settlement of federal and state investigations into whether it helped Americans evade taxes, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Under the proposed accord, Bank Leumi would pay about $270 million to the Justice Department and… – Continue reading
WASHINGTON–U. S. authorities on Wednesday approved Medtronic Inc.’s$43 billion merger with fellow medical device maker Covidien PLC after requiring the spinoff of a drug-coated catheter business. The Federal Trade Commission required Minneapolis-based Medtronic to sell off Ireland-based Covidien’s catheter business before completing the acquisition. That $30 million sale, to Colorado-based… – Continue reading
Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — Bank Leumi Le Israel BM is close to a $400 million settlement of federal and state investigations into whether it helped Americans evade taxes, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Under the proposed accord, Bank Leumi would pay about $270 million to the… – Continue reading
LABUAN: Former DAP Chairman here Lau Seng Kiat has questioned the Government’s rationale for parking billions of ringgit in 1MDB funds in distant Cayman Islands instead of the Labuan Financial and Business (ILFB) centre. Lau was referring to on-going controversies relating to the investment prudence of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB)… – Continue reading
Martin Lock was formerly the top withholding-tax specialist at the Tax Office, a role that encompassed oversight of profit shifting by multinationals. He is one of many former officers who have voiced their concerns to Fairfax Media about the challenge of arresting the slide in tax receipts from multinational companies… – Continue reading
The central bank resumed its foreign-exchange support through selling the US dollar to the commercial banks after nearly two years and a half to keep the market stable, officials said. As part of the move, the Bangladesh Bank (BB) sold US$45 million at market rate to five commercial banks directly… – Continue reading
RBC Wealth Management has announced plans to discontinue its private wealth management business in the Caribbean. The strategy to “realign certain businesses within [its] international operations” was presented to staff in an internal memorandum last Thursday. It is not clear whether the business will be closed or sold. Paul French,… – Continue reading
When is a Chinese company not Chinese? When it’s a complex web of offshore vehicles rooted in anonymous tax havens. That description includes some of the People’s Republic’s most successful and innovative companies. It will make the country’s apparent new push on tax evasion hard to enforce. Authorities have extracted… – Continue reading
SMALL Scottish businesses trading over the internet are being forced to turn down thousands of pounds of foreign business because of new European Union rules aimed at preventing tax avoidance by the likes of Amazon. From 1 January, VAT on what the EU deems “digital services” will have to be… – Continue reading
Companies based in the United States now have over $2.1 trillion stashed overseas shielded from U.S. taxes. That’s a sixfold increase in 12 years, NBC News reported citing research provided by Capital Economics. Generally, the U.S. tax policy allows companies based in the country to defer any tax obligation on… – Continue reading
Sit down before you read this: Internet companies pay more corporation tax than the European average, in some cases many times more. According to the European Commission the average ‘effective’ corporate tax rate in the European Union and EFTA is 12.9%; in 2012 Amazon had a whopping 78% in corporation… – Continue reading
Credit Suisse AG (CSGN)’s $2.6 billion plea bargain resolving allegations it helped wealthy Americans avoid paying taxes faces a final hurdle from a federal judge who will decide whether to accept it or throw it out. The first global banking unit in more than a decade to plead guilty to… – Continue reading
Washington, DC – Credit Suisse AG was sentenced today for conspiracy to aid and assist U.S. taxpayers in filing false income tax returns and other documents with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to conspiracy on May 19. The sentencing of the Swiss corporation is the result… – Continue reading
The European Commission will use the ‘Luxleaks’ documents uncovered by investigative journalists three weeks ago in its ongoing investigation of tax avoidance at the European level, Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition chief, said on Thursday (20 November). The documents, known as the ‘Luxleaks’, showed that more than 300 companies, including… – Continue reading
KUALA LUMPUR: IT is not against Malaysian law for companies to keep funds in offshore accounts. Malaysian Companies (SSM) acting chief executive officer Zahrah Abd Wahab Fenner said it was not unusual for companies to keep their funds in offshore accounts. She said this when commenting on 1 Malaysia Development… – Continue reading
Russia’s upper house of parliament has approved an “anti-offshore” law requiring individual and corporate taxpayers to report foreign profits. The Russian government aims to prevent capital outflow via “offshores,” estimated at $200 billion in 2014. The law requires Russian tax authorities to be notified of all foreign dealings. The government… – Continue reading
Is corporate CEO pay really out of control? Well, consider Fleecing Uncle Sam, a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government. Of the 100 highest-paid CEOs in the US, the study finds, twenty-nine of them received more compensation than their companies paid in… – Continue reading
Seven of the biggest U.S. corporations received billions of dollars in tax refunds from the Internal Revenue Service, while dolling out an average of US$17.3 million to CEOs. While Congress is set to renew a slew of corporate tax breaks, new research published Tuesday found some of United States’ biggest… – Continue reading
CEG says the U.S. corporate tax system is in desperate need of reform A recent report from the Center for Effective Government (Fleecing Uncle Sam) highlights that many large U.S. companies pay little to no corporate taxes, and a few even get tax rebates from the federal government. Moreover, in… – Continue reading
Move over, Ireland. Companies from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) to China’s Huawei Technologies Co. scouring Europe for fiscally attractive shores are turning to an unlikely country: France. As a base for research and development teams, that is. Tax breaks for R&D, 5.6 billion euros ($7 billion) this year alone, combined with… – Continue reading
You know those annoying “We Agree” television ads by the fossil fuel corporate giant Chevron? The ones where an actor playing a student or a concerned member of a community “agrees” with supposedly noble objectives of this multinational? Those ads make me feel like puking. The objective of this campaign… – Continue reading
BRUSSELS — European Union authorities have accused the Netherlands of making a special deal with Starbucks that helped the company lower its taxes, creating unfair advantages over other countries in the bloc. The report by the bloc’s competition authority, made public on Friday, is a preliminary finding in a review… – Continue reading
This offshore illegal scam showed that, in Ireland as elsewhere, taxes really were for the “little people”. The facts emerged as a by-product of the tribunal directed by Mr Justice Brian McCracken in 1997. It was set up to trace payments by supermarket magnate Ben Dunne to Fianna Fail’s Charlie… – Continue reading
(Reuters) – Regulators fined six major banks a total of $4.3 billion for failing to stop traders from trying to manipulate the foreign exchange market, following a yearlong global investigation. HSBC Holdings Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc, UBS AG and Bank of… – Continue reading
Two Zimbabwe Revenue Authority officers yesterday appeared in court charged with soliciting for a bribe from Megalinks Pvt (Ltd) to help the firm evade paying over $6 million in taxes. zimra chief investigation officer Tafara Gumede (41) of 4 Gainsbrugh Court in Harare and an investigation officer Obrie Tinashe Tozivepi… – Continue reading
Official ‘offered €20,000’ to wrap up tax evasion probe GARDAI have now received 5,500 pages of files relating to allegations of tax-evasion by holders of Ansbacher accounts. Jobs Minister Richard Bruton forwarded the allegations of a whistleblower in his department to the gardai last night. The documents have been sent… – Continue reading
Subsidiary funds companies within Irish multinational, says spokesman RH did not feature in the leaked files, but accounts for one of its Luxembourg subsidiaries show it had multibillion-euro intra-group loans going in and out of the state. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons Ireland’s largest indigenous multinational, building materials group CRH, has a… – Continue reading
Delhi Tribunal holds that the mere fact that one of the steps in a transaction resulted in capital loss for the taxpayer would not make the series of transactions a sham. Karnataka High Court holds that shares bought at a premium, and sold at a lower value to individuals (ex-employees… – Continue reading
Covidien transferred right to $6.9bn loan to new entity Multinational medical supplies group, Covidien, transferred the right to loans totalling $6.9 billion from Luxembourg to a new Irish company as part of an elaborate inter-group tax planning arrangement agreed with the Luxembourg tax authorities in 2009. Under the deal, the… – Continue reading
After the US bailed out the insurance conglomerate AIG in 2008, the company’s employees kept to business as usual—which included setting up complex tax structures to avoid taxes in Europe and Japan. In 2008, the company was on the brink of a bankruptcy that would have created huge losses throughout… – Continue reading
KUALA LUMPUR: Former Finance Minister Daim Zainuddin told a luncheon talk organised by Malaysian Industrial Development Finance Bhd (MIDF) here on Thurs that 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) should keep in mind that the people have a right to expect transparency and accountability from it as taxpayer funds are involved. The… – Continue reading
Papers show firms used internal loans and interest payments to cut tax bills Leaked tax documents show arrangements were signed off by EU state They are legal, but are predicted to trigger calls to stop firms avoiding taxes British companies using scheme include Dyson and drugs group Shire Some of… – Continue reading
Sovereign fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) is bringing back the RM7.18 billion it had invested in the Cayman Islands, despite making good returns. Deputy finance minister Datuk Ahmad Maslan said the fund had already brought back 60% of its funds, and the balance 40% will return to Malaysia by year-end,… – Continue reading
A source revealed that in order to settle the investigation into whether Bank Leumi Le-Israel (LUMI) BM helped Americans evade taxes, New York’s banking regulator will ask for over $300 million. The head of the state’s Department of Financial Services, Benjamin Lawsky, is looking for an amount that surpasses what… – Continue reading
For more than a decade, tax gurus at PricewaterhouseCoopers helped Caterpillar Inc., the U.S. heavy equipment maker, move profits produced by its lucrative spare-parts business from the U.S. to a tiny subsidiary in Switzerland. Little changed except the bookkeeping. Parts were still shipped from suppliers to a warehouse in Morton,… – Continue reading
Apple is debuting €2.8bn of bonds as the iPhone maker seeks to fund another round of shareholder rewards without using overseas cash that would be subject to US repatriation taxes. The technology company is offering €1.4bn of eight-year notes and €1.4bn of 12-year securities, a source said. Goldman Sachs Group… – Continue reading
Private sector arm of DfID and other EU development institutions channel significant investments to offshore havens, study finds More than two-thirds of the investments made by the private sector arm of the UK’s aid programme last year were channelled through “notoriously secretive” tax havens, according to a report that calls… – Continue reading
