NEW YORK — U.S. multinational companies are saving $100 billion a year by shifting their profits overseas to lower their tax bills, according to a study released Tuesday that found that corporate tax-dodging is a bigger problem than previously estimated. Most U.S. companies pay far less than the country’s 35… – Continue reading
Only a week after the so-called Panama Papers burst into the media spotlight early last month, the Canadian government issued a news release vowing to “crack down on tax evasion and tax avoidance.” The leak of a staggering 11.5 million documents from a Panama City law firm promised to reveal… – Continue reading
TOKYO — Do the rich and powerful really dodge taxes? They do. The “Panama Papers” – 11.5 million or so documents leaked from a Panama law firm specializing in tax shelters of various kinds and degrees of ingenuity – are shocking, however, not only to the naively innocent but to seasoned… – Continue reading
Unctad thinktank shows firms funnelled $221bn in 2015 through low-tax jurisdictions such as the Netherlands and tax havens in the Caribbean The UN has urged governments to stem the flow of funds to tax havens after companies funnelled $221bn (£152bn) into countries with low tax rates last year. The Netherlands… – Continue reading
Panama Papers’ disclosures now and earlier dealings of Vodafone through Cayman Islands are stories of famous tax havens, which evoke discussions of how tax evasion takes place. These are all direct taxes, mainly corporate tax, and not indirect tax. These are cases of tax planning that come to the fore… – Continue reading
A federal prosecutor in New York has opened a criminal investigation involving the Panama Papers — a trove of materials from a Panamanian law firm that show a massive, secretive world of offshore industry. In a letter to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara wrote… – Continue reading
Less than two weeks after publication of the Panama Papers, a year-long investigation by hundreds of news organizations around the world, including the Star, cast a bright light on the world of offshore tax havens, a new report from Oxfam reveals how much money the 50 largest U.S. corporations have… – Continue reading
FATCA Notification and Reporting Deadlines Extended The Cayman Islands Department for International Tax Cooperation (“DITC”) has issued an industry advisory advising that it will be adopting a soft approach to the upcoming 30 April notification deadline for US and UK FATCA and 31 May reporting deadline for both US and… – Continue reading
Panama is a tax haven, but Mauritius is one with which India has a comprehensive double tax treaty. This complicates matters more. In popular Indian imagination, a tax haven is generally associated with Switzerland and its numbered bank accounts. But tax havens are numerous, have grown in importance, and are… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI: Following the Panama Papers leak, India is seeking to restart talks with the Central American country on a Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) that can help uncover information on wealth hidden away from public scrutiny. Talks with Panama on such an agreement aimed at information exchange on tax… – Continue reading
TOKYO — Measures to deter tax avoidance will be discussed at next week’s meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers in light of the release of the Panama Papers, including expanding an information-sharing agreement to include Panama and other countries. The release of leaked documents from a… – Continue reading
March 31 — Minnesota Sen. John Marty (DFL) introduced legislation that would require corporations headquartered in 46 tax havens to be subject to the same taxation as domestic companies. While it’s still early in the legislative session—the bill was introduced March 29—a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce told… – Continue reading
The investigation and prosecution of tax evasion has, in the last decade, grown from a specialised subcategory of law enforcement into a first-tier policy concern for the global community.Starting with the US government’s crackdown on Swiss bank UBS in 2008, there has been a steady drumbeat of news about prosecutions… – Continue reading
The Government of St. Kitts and Nevis, through its Inland Revenue Department has gone live with Vizor Software’s FATCA & AEOI solution, the FATCA Reporting Portal. Ottawa, Canada (PRWEB) March 17, 2016 Today, Vizor Ltd. announced that the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis has gone live with the Vizor… – Continue reading
Ban on tax haven land rejected in favour of ‘transparency register’ PROPOSALS TO OUTLAW the ownership of land in offshore tax havens were rejected by the Scottish Parliament today [Wednesday 16 March] on the basis of private legal advice. Estimates that 750,000 acres of Scotland are owned in tax havens… – Continue reading
In their latest attempt to try to stamp out tax avoidance by multinationals in the European Union, lawmakers are set to question Apple, Google, IKEA and McDonald’s over their tax affairs as EU member states fail to agree a common tax policy. Lawmakers in the EU have struggled to prevent… – 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
China’s chess game to seize control of the South China Sea may take an interesting turn if an influential businessman’s suggestion is followed and Beijing turns one of the disputed islands into its very own Cayman Islands-style offshore bank. The idea, as explained by The Washington Post, is to establish… – Continue reading
Fortune 500 firms may be avoiding $695 billion in U.S. income taxes on $2.4 trillion held offshore. What do Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have in common? Both seek an end to the use of offshore tax havens by corporate America. Bernie Sanders’ plan ends the ability of corporations to… – Continue reading
Two units of Cayman National Corporation Ltd pleaded guilty to U.S. charges on Wednesday as part of a $6 million settlement of an investigation into how the financial services firm helped Americans evade paying taxes. Cayman National Securities Ltd and Cayman National Trust Co Ltd each pleaded guilty in federal… – Continue reading
Twenty Caribbean and Latin American nations have been named by the U.S. as “major money laundering” countries in the 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) from the U.S. State Department released Wednesday, Mar. 2, 2016. A major money laundering is defined by statute as one “whose financial institutions engage… – Continue reading
During a political season in which populist fury and anger at big business is running high, two presidential candidates want to eliminate the ability of multinational firms to keep earnings overseas and avoid U.S. taxes. They also just happen to be the two most surprising and disruptive candidates in the… – Continue reading
In its time, the Irving empire has had plenty of federal contracts — all of them lucrative, many of them controversial. So it wasn’t a surprise to hear that a federal cabinet committee is reviewing Irving’s $26 billion sole-source (but still unsigned) contract to build a fleet of warships for… – Continue reading
Free-market advocates say retrospective tax claim on the British telecom major sends a negative message to global investors. It seems to be a weak argument Like all tax disputes, the one that involves Vodafone and the government is quite a tangled one. The company has been absolved of tax liability… – Continue reading
What is FATCA? FATCA refers to US legislation more fully known as the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and includes the US Treasury regulations implementing it. It was enacted as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act of 2010 (otherwise known as the, “HIRE Act”) on 18 March… – Continue reading
Over the last two decades, an increasing number of companies have set up subsidiaries in offshore financial centres. So why don’t they move the entire business, and establish headquarters there too? While it seems prestigious—and tax-savvy—to be based in the Cayman Islands or Luxembourg, companies that choose to do so… – Continue reading
To search for a tax haven to free yourself from tax burden, you need not have to go to Bermuda, Isle of Man, Cayman Islands, Dubai, Switzerland, Mauritius or any other country. It is just right here in India where we are living, hidden in various sections of our Income… – Continue reading
‘Multinational corporations complain all the time of excessive demand about excessive taxation, but it is also true that MNCs across the world tend to find tax avoidance and sometimes tax evasion as an appropriate technique’ Blaming multinational corporations squarely for tax controversies, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan has said their… – Continue reading
The brands are known worldwide, and even though global companies like Google, Amazon, and Starbucks make billions — they pay little or no taxes at all in the UK and other markets where the firms make a majority of revenue and profits. Companies like Microsoft, Twitter, and Apple don’t set… – Continue reading
JOHANNESBURG – A data sharing agreement signed by 31 countries – including South Africa – in a bid to enhance transparency by multinational enterprises, is unlikely to have an immediate impact on mining companies. Through the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on the Exchange of Country-by-Country Reporting, signed by members of… – Continue reading
The British Virgin Islands (BVI) Court tightens up on creditors raising spurious disputes and relying on arbitration clauses to avoid insolvency. There has been a recent trend in the BVI whereby debtor companies have sought to identify what appear to be spurious disputes and then rely upon arbitration clauses in… – Continue reading
The formal IRS/Department of Justice (DOJ) Swiss Bank Program has concluded with 80 Swiss banks coming forward. The banks agreed to provide information about personnel, depositors and advisors who were participated in or assisted U.S. taxpayers in offshore tax evasion. In addition to disclosure and cooperation with investigations each of… – Continue reading
There is no doubt that Cayman Islands remain the favorite domicile for alternative investment funds globally. Cayman is a full service jurisdiction complying with all international standards, but it’s also business-friendly, with a lot of demand to have all relevant industry services located there: 184 banks, 149 trust companies, 108… – Continue reading
It’s a whopping four and a half thousand miles away from the UK but the Cayman Islands is a slice of British-overseas paradise. Watched over by a Governor appointed from Whitehall, the Caymans are technically British. But there’s a huge difference between that island and the UK: no-one seems to… – Continue reading
India’s biggest source of FDI is India itself, money departing on a short holiday to a tax haven and then routed back as FDI. Will the government muster up the political will to clamp down on the tax-allergic business elite? This could be a bumper year for the ever-lucrative tax… – Continue reading
Cayman Islands has introduced limited liability company (LLC) legislation that combines the key features of a company and a partnership, intended to increase the structuring options for US investment funds. US clients have reportedly been requesting this legislative development for some time to provide a better match with the Delaware… – Continue reading
Barclays (BARC.L) has sold its offshore trust business to an independent investor group but will keep a 20 percent stake in the new company, renamed as ZEDRA, for at least three years. The sale marks another step in the British bank’s efforts to simplify its wealth and investment management activities…. – Continue reading
Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs) are jurisdictions, usually self-governing, which because of their low tax regimes, have specialized in providing commercial services to corporations and individuals, whether or not they are normally resident in that jurisdiction. The better-known offshore financial centres are small and sparsely populated countries or islands, and are… – Continue reading
Billionaire John Paulson’s New York hedge fund firm has shut an operation in Bermuda that had been targeted by a Democratic lawmaker as a tax shelter. Paulson’s venture, a reinsurer named PacRe Ltd., has stopped writing new coverage, and its insurance policies have expired, according to two people familiar with… – Continue reading
The Limited Liability Companies Bill, 2015 was published on 18th December 2015. It is likely to be enacted as the Limited Liability Companies Law in January 2016 and brought into force before the end of June 2016. Once that is completed, the Cayman Islands will then be able to offer… – Continue reading
The BVI and Cayman are often referred to as “tax neutral” and you might have been told that, for this reason, it would be advantageous to establish your fund in either jurisdiction. What does this actually mean and what does it mean for your fund? Primarily, it means that BVI… – Continue reading
U.S.-based multinational corporations are allowed to play by a different set of rules than small and domestic businesses or individuals when it comes to the tax code. Rather than paying their fair share, many multinational corporations use accounting tricks to pretend for tax purposes that a substantial portion of their… – Continue reading
Despite popular campaign and committee recommendations, tax haven restrictions will not be included in bill AN OVERDUE land reform report from the Scottish Government has categorically refused to bring back a proposal which campaigners say would have tackled the phenomenon of Scottish land being owned in offshore tax havens. Dropped… – Continue reading
The Department of Justice announced today that Union Bancaire Privée, UBP SA (UBP), reached a resolution under the department’s Swiss Bank Program. UBP will pay a penalty of more than $187 million. “Today’s agreement marks the final resolution with UBP, which acknowledges its role in conspiring with U.S. taxpayers to… – Continue reading
Although the British Virgin Islands is often seen as an offshore tax haven, a closer look shows such opinions may be overstated There is a stereotypical image of the so-called ‘tax haven’ for ‘shady people to put their money’. While it is true that BVI Finance enjoys warm, sunny weather… – Continue reading
Bermuda has “long been a popular tax haven” according to a story by gobankingrates.com, which ranked the island as one of the “top 10 best tax havens in the world.” The story said “Bermuda has long been a popular tax haven, said Ravi Ramnarain, an independent certified public accountant. “Wealthy… – Continue reading
On January 1, 2016, the new standard for automatic exchange of information between tax authorities developed by the OECD (the “Common Reporting Standard”) becomes effective in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey, Jersey and a number of other jurisdictions that are part of the “Early Adopters Group.”… – Continue reading
Tax cheats are facing a series of year-end deadlines to come clean, as an international dragnet affecting both wealthy Canadians with offshore accounts and Americans in Canada who have failed to file U.S. tax returns keeps tightening. Lawyers say some Canadians with Swiss bank accounts have received letters demanding written… – Continue reading
US Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has pledged a crackdown on tax avoidance involving Bermuda and other offshore jurisdictions. Mr Sanders, currently trailing Hillary Clinton in the race for the nomination as presidential candidate, made the promise on an online political channel in America. Mr Sanders said he would use… – Continue reading
(CNS Business): Financial Services Minister Wayne Panton is still battling to get the Cayman Islands taken off the latest blacklist, maintaining that the inclusion of Cayman on the European blacklist of financial centres was completely inappropriate and misinformed. However, he said that stigma and the position taken by some nations… – Continue reading
