The rich are getting richer in America but that prosperity is not trickling down the economic food chain, with investment capital pooling up in thriving portions of big cities. One reason for this, experts believe, is the amount of wealth tied up in assets—real estate holdings and stock portfolios, primarily—that...
US taxpayers who have failed to declare their offshore money will lose the chance to confess to the Internal Revenue Service later this year. The IRS has announced that the Overseas Voluntary Disclosure Program will close on September 28. In the 10 years the OVDP has run, 56,000 taxpayers have...
NEW YORK —Globe Afrique Media and Communication has initiated a research on naturalized US citizens living and working abroad, especially in African countries who have either refused to file US federal and state taxes or are under-reporting their income and assets. In a recent assessment conducted by Globe Afrique, hundreds...
HEADS of financial institutions face a fine of up to $10,000 or two years in prison if they fail to make the necessary accounts reports. The reminder came in a statement from the Ministry of Finance, Trade and Investment this week. It stressed that the deadline is approaching for filing...
The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently published a document reminding taxpayers that income derived from virtual currency transactions must be reported on income tax returns. The IRS states that taxpayers who fail to report virtual currency earning may be audited or made liable for “penalties and interest.” IRS...
The Belgian Special Tax Inspectorate (STI) is looking for Belgian individuals who have invested in cryptocurrencies in foreign exchanges, local news outlet De Standaard reported Friday, March 2. After receiving information from Finnish authorities that several Belgian taxpayers had been trading on Finnish crypto exchanges, the STI started looking into...
Puerto Rico’s Governor, Ricardo Rossello in a move to attract crypto investors and holders to live in its land made an open call to everybody to come and take advantage of the tax haven. Puerto Rico recently got devastated by hurricanes Maria and Irma and is trying to recover slowly...
It is a known fact that many of the cryptocurrency traders, as well as investors, are not paying taxes. The reason for this is that there is no proper legal framework to pay taxes. Moreover, the exchanges are not compliant with the tax laws. Owing to this very reason, investors,...
Coinbase, the world’s largest Bitcoin brokerage and wallet platform, has won a partial but significant victory in its fight against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), as Cointelegraph previously reported. Brief history of Coinbase v. IRS On January 15, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that the IRS sent the company a...
In the aftermath of Satoshi Nakamoto’s groundbreaking paper in 2009, money began travelling via a new financial route – virtual currencies. The first Bitcoin exchange was established on February 6, 2010 where Bitcoin traded for the first time for 0.3 cents. Last June, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants...
The US IRS announced this week on its website that the US has entered into a bilateral competent authority agreement with Greece to exchange country-by-country reports on multinationals. The agreement between the IRS and the Greek Independent Authority for Public Revenue, signed September 27, puts into effect a 2015 deal...
The Internal Revenue Service released guidance Wednesday to give tax relief to residents of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands who have evacuated the islands or were unable to return because of Hurricanes Irma or Maria. The relief extends the typical 14-day absence period to 117 days (starting Sept....
Forming a small insurance company known as a microcaptive can be a great way for small businesses to reduce insurance costs and realize tax savings. Abusive microcaptive arrangements, however, have attracted scrutiny from Congress and the IRS. Last month, the Tax Court decided an important microcaptive case, holding against the...
Kazakhstan and the United States have signed a Model 1 FATCA Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA), which will enable the automatic exchange of financial information on each country’s resident taxpayers to support tax enforcement efforts. The agreement was signed in Astana on September 11, 2017. Kazakh Minister of Finance Bakhyt Sultanov emphasized...
President Donald J. Trump is working to reform the tax system so that Americans are treated fairly and can keep more of their hard-earned money, and companies can bring jobs back to the United States. According to a news release from the administration, Trump will jumpstart America’s economic engine by...
The Internal Revenue Service has signed a contract with a company called Chainalysis that offers software for analyzing and tracking bitcoin transactions. The IRS has been pushing for ways to tax bitcoin transactions. In 2014, it issued basic guidance in Notice 2014-21 stating that virtual currencies such as bitcoin should...
The Internal Revenue Service has extended the deadline for foreign financial institutions to have renewed their FFI Agreements, it has emerged. As reported, the original deadline was 31 July. However, accounting industry sources have flagged up the fact that the Internal Revenue Service is now stating that the deadline for...
A loophole may make it a good place for foreigners to keep cash. Some 65,000 Puerto Ricans left their bankrupt U.S. island commonwealth last year. A group of private bankers are moving the other way. They’re increasingly opening offshore banks known as International Financial Entities, which were created by a...
The Geneva asset management firm Prime Partners has agreed to pay $5 million (CHF4.8 million) to the United States to settle charges for tax evasion and assisting US taxpayers in opening and maintaining undeclared foreign bank accounts from 2001 to 2010. A US Department of Justice (DOJ) statement external linkon...
The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has begun accepting country-by-country (CbC) reports from multinational corporations. In June 2016 the IRS issued final regulations requiring CbC reporting by the ultimate parent entity of a multinational enterprise (MNE) group with revenue of USD850m or more in the preceding accounting year. The first...
The notification follows hectic parleys between India and Switzerland for introduction of AEOI (Automatic Exchange of Information) under guidance of G20, OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) and other global organisations. Switzerland found India’s data security and confidentiality laws “adequate” for entering into an automatic exchange of information pact,...
The International Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation unit is readying two new programs focusing on data investigations and international tax enforcement. The data initiative will tie together the information uncovered by the IRS’s field offices around the country with headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We are standing up a nationally coordinated data...
Obama-administration regulation drew criticism as overbroad Trump ordered review of tax rules that may pose undue burdens A federal rule aimed at limiting corporate “earnings stripping’’ for tax-avoidance purposes may pose an undue burden on taxpayers and may be changed or rescinded, according to a U.S. Internal Revenue Service notice....
The Internal Revenue Service has created a new section on its IRS.gov website dedicated to information on the Country-by-Country Reporting rules of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting project, which aims to discourage tax avoidance by multinational companies. The new Country-by-Country Reporting web pages...
The Internal Revenue Service has updated its online registration system for the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act to allow foreign financial institutions to renew their agreement with the IRS. FATCA was included as part of the HIRE Act of 2010, requiring foreign banks and other financial institutions such as hedge...
A federal district court has ruled in favor of tax preparers who filed a class-action lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over its right to charge fees for Preparer Tax Identification Numbers, and the IRS may need to refund hundreds of millions of dollars in fees collected each year. In...
The Internal Revenue Service is pilot testing a new program for conducting correspondence examinations of taxpayers using secure messaging technology that will also include their tax practitioners who have power of attorney. In an email to tax professionals Friday, the IRS said it plans to invite approximately 8,000 taxpayers who...
Starting on April 27, and finishing on May 2, the European Parliament (EP)’s Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion (PANA) is holding two meetings to present several related studies which address the impact of, and the fight against, tax evasion and money laundering, particularly in...
BASSETERRE, St Kitts (WINN) — Efforts by one American state to officially label St Kitts and Nevis a foreign tax haven are being strongly objected to by the federation’s foreign affairs minister, Mark Brantley, thus joining Antigua and Barbuda in a similar protest. A proposed House Bill 3419 in the...
More Americans are waiting until the very last minute to do their taxes. Last year’s end-of-season rush was intense. The Internal Revenue Service collected 29 million individual returns between April 8 and April 22. That’s one-fifth of all those filed in 2016, a 24 percent surge in late-season filings from...
China’s new transfer pricing rules, effective May 1, endorse the continued use of the arm’s-length standard—the internationally agreed bedrock for pricing transactions within multinational enterprises. The new guidance, Bulletin 6, augurs well for resolving tax disputes between China’s State Administration of Taxation and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service over the...
Online giant wins transfer pricing case against US Internal Revenue Service Amazon. com has won a tax dispute with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), involving more than $1.5 billion (€1.39 billion), in relation to the transactions of a Luxembourg unit more than a decade ago. Judge Albert Lauber of...
The New Zealand Law Society says that following discussions with Inland Revenue and the New Zealand Bankers’ Association it has now reached an understanding with Inland Revenue about application of FATCA to lawyers’ trusts accounts. FATCA is the United States’ Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Its objective is to reduce...
The European Parliament’s Panama Papers investigative committee is preparing for a “fact-finding” visit with counterparts in the U.S. Congress, as well as officials from the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service. The European Union lawmakers’ four-day U.S. trip, which begins March 21, will include a visit to Delaware for meetings...
The new regulations expand the filing requirements for Form 5472 to include disregarded entities with foreign owners when there are certain reportable transactions. If a non-U.S. person (individual or corporation) owns 100 percent of the stock of a U.S. corporate subsidiary, the subsidiary needs to obtain an employer identification number...
With the April 18 tax filing deadline almost a month away, the US Internal Revenue Service has reminded taxpayers to ensure the security of their personal, financial, and tax information. In the sixth in a series of 10 IRS tips called the Tax Time Guide, designed to help taxpayers navigate...
What is a business expense deduction? A business expense deduction is a deduction allowed for ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred in connection with an individual’s trade, business or profession. IRC Section 62(a)(1) operates to assure that all trade or business expenses, deductible as delineated under specific IRC Sections,...
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has reminded certain non-US citizens, such as international students and scholars working or receiving scholarship funds, that they may have special requirements to file a US tax return. The IRS also reminded withholding agents, such as payroll professionals or universities, that accurately filed Forms 1042-S,...
U.S. multinational companies with more than $850 million in annual consolidated gross income now have draft instructions for filing IRS reports on their global tax and profits. The Internal Revenue Service added instructions to the draft Form 8975 and accompanying draft Schedule A it released in December 2016, companies that...
Since President George W. Bush signed the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, the IRS has had a program that rewards Americans who inform the agency on tax dodgers. In its first decade, the program has helped the IRS recover $3.4 billion, and resulted in payouts of $465...
For the third consecutive year, the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has placed abusive micro-captive insurance tax shelters on its list of top tax scams to watch out for in the 2017 filing season. The IRS explained that the US tax code generally allows businesses to create captive insurance companies...
On 7 February 2017, the Minister of Finance of Ukraine and the US Ambassador to Ukraine signed a treaty on Ukraine’s performance of the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) (the Treaty). According to the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, the Treaty is based on the Model 1B Intergovernmental...
MARTINSBURG — The Internal Revenue Service has started releasing this year’s top 12 scams targeting consumers known as “The Dirty Dozen.” The annually compiled list features a variety of scams the agency says are common and that taxpayers could encounter anytime, but especially during peak filing season. Phishing schemes lead...
The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) United States of America Implementation and Enforcement of the Inter-Governmental Agreement was passed in Parliament without opposition, making it mandatory for Antigua & Barbuda’s banks to provide the banking information of US citizens to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The Act requires local...
Madison – Tax-related identity theft is an established concern nationwide, as state and federal tax authorities have wrestled for years with a blight of criminals filing fraudulent tax returns using other people’s personally identifiable information. For a scammer, tax identity theft means quick cash. For a victim, it’s a delayed...
Even though the Internal Revenue Service approves 94 percent of the applications it receives from charities for tax-exempt status filed through the simplified Form 1023-EZ, approximately a quarter of them do not meet the IRS’s own requirements. A recent report by the National Taxpayer Advocate pointed out that Treasury Department...
The Kuwait Ministry of Finance (MOF) has issued a ministerial resolution announcing that Deloitte & Touche, Al-Wazzan & Co in Kuwait has been certified with the ministry for the provision of Foreign Account Tax Compliance (FATCA) services. FATCA is a US legislation which aims to combat tax evasion by US...
What GAO Found In 2015, the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) issued revised guidelines, including 15 actions to help reduce base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) of multinational enterprises (MNEs). One action focuses on transfer pricing guidance with the intent of aligning MNE profits with the location of...
The IRS has been using a John Doe summons to get access to taxpayers’ bitcoin information and is now using the same tactic to get debit card information. According to a report by Forbes, a federal court in Montana gave the IRS permission to serve Michael Behr of Bozeman, Montana,...
The Israel Tax Authority says Americans have provided information on 35,000 accounts held by Israelis in the U.S. and on an unspecified number of American accounts in Israel. The Israel Tax Authority said Monday it had begun passing on data on Israeli bank accounts held by American citizens and Green...
