Commenting on today’s government consultation paper on ‘Strengthening Tax Avoidance Sanctions and Deterrents’, John Cullinane, Tax Policy Director of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, said: “This is the latest in a series of measures cracking down on those who profit from tax avoidance schemes. The Government need to be careful...
Court cases likely over interpretation of the new levy proposed in the Budget for digital economy The government’s plan to expand the scope of equalisation levy proposed in the Union Budget, seeking to bring more transactions in the digital economy under the tax net, has left many e-commerce players fuming....
As part of what it describes as a ‘relentless’ effort to crack down on tax avoidance, HMRC has put out two publications highlighting problems with contractor loan schemes and misleading claims from scheme promoters, in a bid to deter taxpayers from any involvement In its Spotlight 29 document, HMRC says...
The present French Tax Update will focus on an overview of several noteworthy publications, including decisions issued during the past few months by the French Administrative Supreme Court (Conseil d’Etat) and French Constitutional Court (Conseil Constitutionnel), as well as the European Commission decision in respect of the Belgian Excess Profit...
Once known as “Spain’s Princess Diana,” King Felipe’s younger sister is facing criminal fraud charges. Monday saw the start of the trial of Princess Cristina de Borbón – the first member of Spain’s royal family ever to be put on trial in a criminal court. Cristina, 50, is charged with...
More than €45.6bn raised for exchequer last year, up from €41.2bn in 2014 The Revenue Commissioners secured 27 criminal convictions for serious tax evasion and fraud in 2015, according to figures released today. Those prosecutions were on top of 2,063 summary convictions, or lesser charges, for the non-filling of tax...
Viacom Inc. was accused by one of its former executives of plotting to hide revenue from “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” in a Netherlands entity to avoid taxes. The ex-vice president for financial planning at Viacom claims she was fired after opposing what she believed was an illegal tax dodge. Nataki...
(Reuters) – Texas tycoon Sam Wyly is set to face off against the Internal Revenue Service at trial on Wednesday over more than $2 billion the agency says he owes for using offshore trusts to engage in one of the largest tax frauds in U.S. history. The trial in federal...
Legal experts say court order for restaurant’s parent company based in British Virgin Islands could lead to resolution of more disputes in city Hong Kong’s top court recently gave the go-ahead for the parent company of the famous Yung Kee roast goose restaurant in Central to be wound up, despite...
An Uckfield investment banker has been jailed for his involvement in a £2.2 million tax fraud. Phillip Jenkins, of Ketches Lane, Sheffield Park, Uckfield, was found guilty of conspiracy to cheat the Public Revenue and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Jenkins was an investment banker working...
Leeds United chairman Massimo Cellino has been cleared of charges of tax evasion relating to the transfer of two players during his time as owner of Italian club Cagliari. Cellino was acquitted by a court in Sardinia today after his lawyers successfully argued that a government ruling introduced last year...
Island’s biggest employer files suit in San Juan federal court Legal challenge comes as Puerto Rico copes with debt payments The Puerto Rico unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sued the island’s government, seeking to overturn a new tax the retailer calls unfairly high. Enacted in May, Puerto Rico’s...
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has launched a new crackdown on tax avoidance with 10 tips on how to stay on the right side of the law. The warning follows recent revelations of 1,500 investors, including celebrities and sports stars, who are being pursued for £200 million for staking cash...
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has won a judgement that Rangers’ use of Employee Benefit Trusts (EBTs) broke tax rules. Rangers used the scheme from 2001 until 2010 to give millions of pounds of tax-free loans to players and other staff. In what became known as the “big tax case”,...
On August 4 and 5, 2015, the FC heard oral arguments in a lawsuit—commenced on August 11, 2014 by two Canada-US citizens—that challenges the law implementing the Canada- US intergovernmental agreement (IGA) relating to FATCA (Virginia Hillis et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada et al., court file no....
The United States government has denied businessman JP McManus is entitled to a $5.2 million (€4.7 million) refund of taxes which he claims were wrongly withheld on $17.4 million in US gambling winnings in 2012. The Department of Justice, responding to a legal complaint filed by the Limerick man in...
Barcelona defender Javier Mascherano has reportedly pleaded guilty to a charge of tax evasion after appearing in court on Thursday. AS says that the Argentine was accused of using tax havens to funnel money from image rights and defrauding the Spanish authorities of around €1.5m in 2011 and 2012. Mascherano...
The long-running saga of the Sheriff Gaming / Bubble Group online-casino fraud has moved nearer to its conclusion following the release by a Dutch court of its ruling in a tax-evasion case brought against three of the company’s primary owners in late 2013. The tax-evasion charges were just one part...
A decision by the Federal Court of Australia has key implications for transfer pricing of intercompany financing transactions, as well as implication for other broader intercompany arrangements. The case concerns the transfer pricing implications of an intercompany loan agreement between an Australian taxpayer and its U.S. subsidiary (CFC) and whether...
Profit-shifting has not paid off for petroleum multinational Chevron, slugged with a tax bill for $322 million thanks to a Supreme Court decision on Friday. Chevron has been under close scrutiny this year, particularly since a senate inquiry into tax-avoidance in April which also put mining giants BHP, Rio Tinto,...
Kolkata Bench of Tribunal in the case of Outotec GmbH v. DDIT : ITA No. 431 & 432 of 2014 & 283 of 2015 (Kol) dealt with the issue as to whether the sale of equipment, designs and drawings would be taxable under the provisions of the India-Germany DTAA and...
A former Valparaiso businessman who federal prosecutors say lived in Canada for seven years to avoid an obstruction and perjury trial has been sentenced to not quite two years in prison, after finally admitting that he lied under oath to protect an offshore account worth millions of dollars from creditors....
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner, looks set to launch the international community’s most punitive attack on corporate tax avoidance as early as next Wednesday, with rulings that could impose heavy costs on multinationals, reports the Financial Times. Ms Vestager is understood to have postponed her first trip to China...
BENGALURU: The Karnataka tax department’s recent proposal to e-commerce firms, considered a face-saver, may not be legally tenable, tax experts said citing High Court and apex court rulings. The Karnataka commercial taxes department, last week, asked e-commerce firms including Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal to deduct 1% of the money payable...
A trial in Switzerland has been adjourned against Hervé Falciani, the former IT worker from the HSBC Private Bank in Geneva who leaked data about thousands of suspected tax evaders. Falciani, 43, now living in Spain, failed to appear in the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona in the canton of...
Today, counsel for the taxpayer and the Franchise Tax Board (“FTB”) argued before the California Supreme Court in The Gillette Company & Subs. v. California Franchise Tax Board. This case has been watched closely by taxpayers and tax practitioners on a national level since briefing was completed nearly two years...
The court overruled the order of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal issued last year suggesting that the income tax dept has jurisdiction in this dispute Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Thursday ruled in favour of the Indian arm of Vodafone Group Plc. in a Rs.8,500 crore transfer pricing tax dispute....
Spanish prosecutors have dropped all tax fraud charges against FC Barcelona’s Argentinian star Lionel Messi, but will pursue the case against his father. Jorge Horacio Messi and the footballer were accused of defrauding Spain’s tax office by not paying €4m (£2.9m, $4.5m) due in taxes between 2007-09. If convicted, the...
A financial adviser is one of the five defendants embroiled in a court battle after facing allegations of setting up a £262 million tax avoidance scheme. In a trial at Birmingham Crown Court, financial adviser Norman Leighton, chartered accountant and film producer Keith Hayley, producer Robert Bevan, Charles Savill and...
The court agrees to an early hearing in the case, scheduling it for 30 September New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to an early hearing in the case of Castleton Investment Ltd scheduling it for 30 September. Castleton Investment, a Mauritius-based foreign company, is contesting a case against...
The UK’s tax treatment of US limited liability companies (LLCs) will remain mostly unchanged despite a recent Supreme Court decision in favour of the taxpayer, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has confirmed.25 Sep 2015 HMRC said that the decision of the UK’s highest court in favour of George Anson, a...
A former Valparaiso man has admitted lying about his control of a Bahamian trust account worth millions of dollars, for the purpose of stonewalling attempts to collect $188 million in civil judgments against him. On Tuesday, Peter G. Rogan, 69, pleaded guilty to perjury in the U.S. District Court in...
Accounting firm joined revenue minister at speech while fighting court order Top Conservative cabinet ministers met publicly with senior staff from KPMG’s tax division, and one went so far as to promote the firm, even as the Canada Revenue Agency was alleging the company set up an offshore tax “sham”...
Fraudster Timothy Charles Pratten has been found guilty on seven counts of obtaining a financial advantage by deception, in the Supreme Court of NSW in Sydney this week. Justice Stephen Rothman found Pratten, A 55-year-old insurance broker, failed to properly declare income of more than $5 million between 2003 and...
The trickery of hiding assets while paying millions in legal fees emphasises the case for a solid pre-nup says Vanessa Friend A High Court judge has penalised a husband for his ‘blatant dishonesty’ by ordering him to pay all of his wife’s divorce costs of £344,000. Sir Peter Singer said...
This case was an appeal from the Gauteng Division of the High Court to the Supreme Court of Appeal (“SCA”) pertaining to the correctness of the granting of an ex parte preservation order application that was brought against Mr Krok by the Commissioner of the South African Revenue Service (“SARS”) in...
The former chief executive of Nudie Juice, Andrew Binetter, is being sued by the Australian Taxation Office following allegations he oversaw a tax scam involving millions of dollars. The case, which is due to be heard in the Federal Court before Justice Gleeson today in Sydney, follows investigations by the...
Investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova delivered a scathing final statement in a Baku courtroom on August 31, calling Azerbaijan’s government a “repression machine” and dismissing her trial as a “scam” aimed to silence her. Before she was cut off without finishing her remarks, Ismayilova told the court that her reporting proved...
Ireland has made “little or no” effort over the past four years to create a corruption-free playing field for global trade, violating its “obligation to combat cross-border bribery”, reports the Irish Times. The Transparency International Exporting Corruption report, released on Thursday, found that Ireland, along with countries such as Russia,...
Questions over tax — hotly denied — feature in a row centring on one of the capital’s biggest art collectors One of London’s wealthiest but most secretive families is locked in a bitter feud over the ownership of its empire, which spans high-end London properties to African tobacco-trading businesses. A...
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WDAM) –This is a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Two tax return preparers with offices located in California, Maryland and New York were sentenced today in Los Angeles for facilitating an offshore tax fraud scheme, announced Acting Assistant Attorney General Caroline D. Ciraolo of the...
A Laguna Beach doctor was sentenced today to probation and ordered to pay about $235,000 in fines and restitution for hiding an offshore bank account. Baruch Fogel, an obstetrician and gynecologist, diverted at least $8 million to an undeclared bank account in Luxembourg through the Israel-based Bank Leumi, according to...
A millionaire businessman charged over an alleged $63 million tax-evasion and money-laundering scheme can’t afford to pay his legal bills after blowing millions of dollars on luxury cars, boats and an extravagant lifestyle, a court has heard. The taxpayer will now bear at least $624,000 in legal fees incurred by...
Where a foreign company renders professional services to a South African company in South Africa, it is important that the foreign entity considers whether, as a result of rendering such services, the foreign company will create a permanent establishment in South Africa. The reason why this becomes important is that...
A recent decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals illustrates the futility of expecting that the Fifth Amendment Privilege Against Self-incrimination will shield taxpayers from production of offshore financial records. The trial court was asked to protect a U.S. taxpayer from enforcement of an IRS Summons for production of...
Bahamas Supreme Court rejects Baha Mar’s Delaware chapter 11 application In a ruling by Justice Ian Winder on Wednesday of this week, The Bahamas Supreme Court Denied Baha Mar’s Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Recognition Petition. This paves the way for the Supreme Court to appoint a provisional liquidator on the 31st...
Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., along with six current and former U.S. citizens living abroad, filed a lawsuit, July 14, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio challenging the constitutionality of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and foreign bank account reporting (FBAR) regime. “FATCA eschews...
You might think your bank records–especially foreign banks–are personal and confidential. Yet the government can make you hand over your bank records, even if they incriminate you. It turns out not even the Fifth Amendment can protect you. With FATCA, the pace of foreign account disclosures is frantic, and the...
(MENAFN – The Peninsula) A former high-ranking executive of US computer chip giant Qualcomm was fined 500,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday for insider trading, US officials said. Jing Wang, 52, the former executive vice president and president of global business operations at Qualcomm pleaded guilty last...
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – State Rep. Joe Armstrong of Knoxville has pleaded not guilty to federal fraud and tax evasion charges connected to an increase in the state’s cigarette tax. The Knoxville Democrat was restrained by handcuffs and leg shackles when he appeared before U.S. Magistrate C. Clifford Shirley Jr....
