The Vodafone tax issue has affected investor sentiments towards India: ABAX Corporate CEO NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 26: The Vodafone tax dispute and General Anti-Avoidance Rules have impacted investor sentiment badly. Coupled with the delay in revising the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) with Mauritius, fund flow from the island-nation has… – Continue reading
Feb 26 (Reuters) – A former UBS AG banker pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to defraud the United States by helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. Martin Lack, a 51-year-old Swiss resident, pleaded guilty in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to a single conspiracy count in a 2011 indictment… – Continue reading
WASHINGTON: The U.S. has expanded its action against tax cheaters to countries such as India, Israel and Liechtenstein, a top U.S. official told lawmakers. So far, the U.S. action was primarily focused against tax cheaters on Switzerland. Since 2009, the Department has publicly charged 73 account holders and 35 professionals… – Continue reading
Authorities aren’t waiting for new reporting laws to go into effect to track down Americans who they say owe money The US needs money — and it’s willing to go to the ends of the earth, including Israel, to track down deadbeats who are evading their taxes. Israel was named… – Continue reading
The government, on Friday, decided not to withdraw Vodafone conciliation talks for settling the Rs.20,000-crore tax dispute until a separate case over transfer pricing is settled by a tribunal. The Union Cabinet, at its meeting on Friday, agreed not to take any ‘hasty decision’, and decided to fast-track the transfer… – Continue reading
The chickens are quietly coming home to roost. In Europe, that is. For a long time, multinational companies have created shell companies – those offices where, beyond furniture and a teapot, there is hardly any business going on – to mainly pay lower tax and move illicit funds. These opaque… – Continue reading
(Reuters) – Swiss bank UBS is prepared to pay a fine of up to 200 million euros ($274.5 million) in an investigation of alleged tax avoidance by the lender’s German clients, a German newspaper reported on Tuesday. The German authorities originally demanded 300 million euros from UBS, but a compromise… – Continue reading
Credit Suisse Group , Switzerland’s second biggest bank, went to great lengths to assist US customers trying to open Swiss bank accounts and evade taxes, entertaining them at a Swiss-themed ball in New York and golf tournaments in Florida and opening a branch in the Zurich airport to serve Americans… – Continue reading
WASHINGTON (AP) — Billions of dollars in U.S. taxes are going unpaid because Americans are exploiting Swiss bank accounts, and the U.S. government has failed to aggressively pursue Switzerland’s second-largest bank, a Senate investigation has found. The bank, Credit Suisse, has provided accounts in Switzerland for more than 22,000 U.S. clients… – Continue reading
Zara’s celebrity chic helps make its Spanish parent company, Inditex SA, the world’s biggest fashion retailer. Singer Taylor Swift, reality-television personality Kim Kardashian and Kate Middleton, Prince William’s wife, have all been spotted wearing the stylish, low-cost brand. Another reason for Inditex’s industry-best profit margins of almost 15 percent: the… – Continue reading
The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold a hearing on a crackdown on offshore tax evasion that has stalled as prosecutors conduct criminal probes of 14 banks, including Credit Suisse Group AG. (C:US) The hearing will focus on “the status of efforts to hold Swiss banks and their U.S. clients… – Continue reading
The G20 finance ministers have once again agreed to cooperate to counter aggressive cross-border tax avoidance by multinationals. Many US firms are using tax avoidance schemes for their non-US earnings while they shamelessly claim they are paying appropriate taxes in the source countries in which they operate. The OECD responded to earlier… – Continue reading
Group-of-20 nations agreed to implement a global standard for automatically exchanging information between tax authorities by the end of 2015, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said. The endorsement is a step toward putting an end to “banking secrecy as we know it,” Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the OECD’s… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: The Income Tax department plans to rebut Vodafone’s notice under BIPA saying that the pact between India and Netherlands does not cover taxation issues. The response to the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPA) notice was finalised after a meeting of the inter-ministerial group, headed by the Finance Secretary. The other… – Continue reading
UTI International (Singapore) chief executive officer Praveen Jagwani says the asset manager had to remove American investors because of the compliance burden Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) brings. The regulation requires financial institutions to use enhanced due diligence to identify US citizens that have invested in either non-US financial… – Continue reading
The United States permanent subcommittee will be holding a hearing as they try to solve issues surrounding offshore tax evasion as prosecutors conduct criminal probes of 14 banks including credit Suisse Group AG. According to a statement by the committee, the focus will be on the status efforts to hold… – Continue reading
Vodafone, stung by the decision of a cash-hungry Indian government to apply new rules on retrospective taxation and press its demand for as much as Rs20,000 crore ($3.2 billion) in back taxes and penalties, has countered by saying gains from the overseas transaction in which it bought out Hutchinson’s Indian… – Continue reading
British telecom major Vodafone said on Wednesday that the government is looking to tax it twice over. The company was referring to its total tax liability of Rs 20,000 crore in terms ofcapital gains tax of a 2007 deal to buy into Hutch Essar as well as a transfer pricing case. Vodafone had… – Continue reading
In a world of widening inequality, it is perhaps the most pernicious injustice of them all. Multinational corporations and wealthy individuals avoiding tax on an unprecedented scale, shuffling assets, income and debt to the most favourable tax jurisdictions and confounding hapless authorities. It is impossible to identify exactly how much… – Continue reading
Some three hundred years ago Sir Walter Scott asked, “Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.” Well, in America corporations are legally deemed “persons,” so the answer to Scott’s question is “Yes,” at least when it… – Continue reading
Singapore’s wealth management industry grew 22 percent in 2012 to 1.63 trillion Singaporean dollars ($1.29 trillion US), and its share of global offshore wealth is expected to outstrip Switzerland by 2020, according to data from WealthInsight, an industry research group. Learning from the recent scandal when Swiss banks, including UBS… – Continue reading
Swiss banks are set to be in Capitol Hill’s crosshairs next week over tax evasion. Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, is planning to lead the latest tax-evasion hearing in the permanent subcommittee on investigations, which he heads. The focus this time is the status of efforts to hold Swiss… – Continue reading
Multinational tax avoidance in the digital economy has become a hot political topic with public reports of companies such as Google, Apple and Starbucks not paying a “fair share” of tax. The G20 group of rich economies has commissioned the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to tackle corporate profit… – Continue reading
Swiss bank UBS is at the centre of embarrassing revelations that it helped to set up a secretive offshore firm for the wife and daughter of a former senior Chinese official who has since been convicted of corruption. Zhang Shuguang, a former deputy chief engineer of the disbanded railways ministry,… – Continue reading
India’s finance ministry is preparing to seek the cabinet’s approval to withdraw conciliation proceedings with the UK telecoms firm. Vodafone, the world’s second-largest mobile operator by subscribers, entered India in 2007 by acquiring Hutchison Whampoa’s mobile phone assets. It is contesting a tax bill of about 112bn rupees (£1.1bn) relating… – Continue reading
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) collected more tax from smaller businesses than large multinationals last year as a result of its investigations into firms’ transfer pricing arrangements, according to figures obtained by Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com. Corporate tax expert Heather Self of Pinsent Masons said that HMRC… – Continue reading
Yahoo! Inc is shifting its main European tax base to Ireland from Switzerland, a Reuters examination of company statements and accounts shows, as pressure mounts on the Alpine nation to abolish some corporate tax incentives. The internet search group said the shift reflected a streamlining of its European operations and… – Continue reading
France will not tolerate tax avoidance, says Francois Hollande French president Francois Hollande says that “everyone must be in the same competitive situation” French president Francois Hollande speaks during a press conference to present his 2014 policy plans at the Elysee presidential palace. Francois Hollande is making a state visit… – Continue reading
U.S. prosecutors on Thursday announced they indicted Peter Amrein, a Swiss asset manager, on charges that he assisted U.S. taxpayers in evading millions in taxes by hiding money in offshore trusts at multiple Swiss banks. Prosecutors accuse Amrein, who worked at an unidentified asset management firm, of working with Edgar Paltzer,… – Continue reading
