The Canadian Government is pressing ahead with plans to cut the small business tax rate. The Government has tabled a Notice of Ways and Means Motion in the House of Commons that proposes phased reductions in the small business tax rate. Under the changes, the rate will fall from 10.5… – Continue reading
Bad news for the world’s favourite search engine. On Tuesday, the Indian tax office gained an upper hand in its six-year-long battle with Google India in a ruling that would set a precedence for some of the other multinational companies. The rift owes its origin to the arrangement and fund… – Continue reading
Cutting Australia’s company tax rate is “now an urgent matter,” according to Treasurer Scott Morrison. In a speech to CEDA, Morrison said that with the UK, France, and the US each seeking to lower their corporate tax rate, Australian businesses risk “becoming stranded on an uncompetitive tax island if we… – Continue reading
ISLAMABAD: The NAB is presently examining all cases of offshore companies, including those unearthed by the Panama Papers to ensure across-the-board accountability. NAB Chairman Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal told The News here on Monday that he was presently studying the cases of offshore companies to see what wrong had been… – Continue reading
Heads of the Armenian and Iranian tax entities met for the first time in Yerevan on Monday and expressed their willingness for deepening cooperation. The two sides also discussed updating the 1998 double taxation treaty. “It is time to edit the current agreement in line with the latest developments in… – Continue reading
In a dramatic turn of events in the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Vodafone Ghana tax dispute before court, the Acting Commissioner-General of the GRA has refused to grant a waiver of the payment of 30 per cent of the value of tax in contention. In a letter to Vodafone… – Continue reading
The European Parliament’s PANA Committee has approved draft recommendations calling for increased scrutiny and regulation of emerging technologies, including virtual currencies and FinTech. The committee also approved a report delving into the findings of an 18-month probe into breaches of EU law in relation to money laundering, tax avoidance and… – Continue reading
HM Revenue and Customs, the UK tax authority, has welcomed a ruling in its favor against a contrived tax avoidance scheme involving an entity in Jersey and the Cayman Islands. HMRC says it expects that the decision will recover GBP325m in unpaid tax. The decision on the scheme, known as… – Continue reading
Bangladesh’s National Board of Revenue (NBR) is clamping down on foreign workers failing to declare their earnings in the country. Earlier companies were encouraged to report details of foreigners they have on their payroll to the Bangladesh Investment Developments Authority (BIDA), as currently required by law. Foreign individuals should pay… – Continue reading
Paul Chan Mo-po says the city must protect against unforeseen market changes at a tax forum that also featured a warning about the city’s international tax compliance There are no plans to cut Hong Kong’s corporate taxes across the board because the government needs to reserve funds to protect the… – Continue reading
Thirty-eight African tax authorities recently converged in Abuja for the International Conference on Tax in Africa. The group discussed ways to boost revenues in Africa, in particular and how to improve collection of corporate income tax, reports Nduka Chiejina (Assistant Editor) Tax collection has never been a piece of cake… – Continue reading
The statement credited to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the country may be operating one of the weakest tax regimes within sub Sahara Africa and beyond has sparked off a controversy of some sort with most Nigerians arguing to the contrary. Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf in this report examines the… – Continue reading
Shadow assistant treasurer suggests companies consider the image their tax minimisation methods project Andrew Leigh, the shadow assistant federal treasurer, has said companies using offshore tax havens to “get around corporate tax” in Australia risk losing what they save in tax via damage to their reputation. Speaking to Guardian Australia… – Continue reading
New Delhi: Star striker Neymar Jr is fined 3.8 million reais ($1.2 million) by a Brazilian court for attempting to “obstruct the continuity” of a tax evasion case. The penalty applies to the Paris Saint-Germain player, his parents and three companies that manage his finances, according to the federal regional… – Continue reading
THE Bahamas yesterday upgraded its tax information exchange agreement with Finland to the automatic variety, as it bids to meet global standards by September 2018. K P Turnquest, deputy prime minister, signed the Protocol to Amend the Tax Information Exchange Agreement between the Bahamas and Finland, with the latter’s ambassador… – Continue reading
LONDON — Brazil has provided investors with some of the best returns in the world this year but investment funds based in Ireland have been forced to adopt new strategies to get their money’s worth. Brazil blacklisted Ireland as a tax haven in September 2016 because of its low corporate… – Continue reading
EU leaders have not yet made a clear choice about how to make sure digital companies pay their fair share of taxes. At an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday (19 October), they adopted a text that balances the wishes of two groups of countries – and can be interpreted… – Continue reading
BRATISLAVA, Oct.18 (Xinhua) — International information exchange system could help fight tax evasion, said President of Slovak Financial Administration Frantisek Imrecze at a press conference here on Wednesday. According to Imrecze, the information exchange system has been available to the Slovak Financial Administration since Sept. 30, the Slovak tax office… – Continue reading
ZURICH (Reuters) – Switzerland said on Wednesday it would start sharing information on the activities of multinationals in its territory with other countries in 2020, joining an international push to fight tax evasion. The new measures will force about 200 large companies in the low-tax haven to prepare country-by-country reports… – Continue reading
Grenada’s Inland Revenue Division has completed a series of training exercises for its staff and the island’s financial institutions in preparation for the start of reporting under the US Financial Account Tax Compliance Act. Reporting by FIs under FATCA is governed by a November 2016 inter-governmental agreement between the US… – Continue reading
NZ’s IRD a global leader in shift to digital, unobtrusive tax administration, Ferguson says Oct. 18 (BusinessDesk) – The Inland Revenue Department is leading the charge in a global shift to digitally-based tax administration that’s unobtrusive and easy to use, says commissioner Naomi Ferguson. The New Zealand tax department is… – Continue reading
Three companies are ultimately owned in the Cayman and British Virgin islands, raising questions about the tax implications of profits generated by solar assets Adani has spread its use of offshore tax havens to its Australian solar projects, providing another avenue that could allow the wealthy Indian family behind the… – Continue reading
The trial in a Frankfurt court of a Swiss private investigator accused of spying on the tax authorities in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia got underway on Wednesday. The 54-year-old allegedly acted on behalf of the Swiss intelligence service trying to uncover a series of thefts of CDs with… – Continue reading
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria has called for a collective effort on the design of temporary, short-term measures to tackle the international tax challenges of the digital economy. Speaking at the Group of Twenty (G-20) Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting held in Washington on October 13, Gurria said: “There… – Continue reading
General Electric, Boston Scientific and other major Massachusetts-based companies are accused of keeping billions of dollars in offshore accounts to avoid taxation in 2016, according to a new report. In fact, the practice extends to 366 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list, according to the Massachusetts Public Interest… – Continue reading
Republic has implemented all four agreed standards under OECD’s tax/profit project An international body overseeing global tax practices has said that Singapore’s tax incentives meet the international standards on countering corporate tax avoidance. The Forum on Harmful Tax Practices (FHTP) said in a report yesterday that it had reviewed 164… – Continue reading
On 1 July 2017, the “Administrative Measures on Due Diligence of Non-resident Financial Account Information in Tax Matters” (the Measures) came into effect. The Measures were jointly promulgated in May 2017 by the State Administration of Taxation (SAT), the Ministry of Finance, the People‘s Bank of China, the China Banking… – Continue reading
Exemptions make the mandatory disclosure regime a joke, says MEP Matt Carthy The Revenue Commissioners have received just 11 reports of potentially abusive tax-avoidance schemes since Ireland made it mandatory in early 2011 for transactions giving “aggressive” tax advantages to be disclosed to authorities. The disclosure by Minister for Finance… – Continue reading
According to the SFIO report, IQ Bridge Limited, Mauritius, and its Indian subsidiary, IQ Bridge Limited, Bangalore, controlled by Mallya and the UB Group, held 15 lakh and 52 lakh equity shares respectively in Kingfisher Airlines before its merger with Deccan Aviation. A PROBE by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office… – Continue reading
Concerns have arisen over a temporary misalignment between the US country-by-country reporting regime and Italian legislation. Antonella Della Rovere and Federico Vincenti of Valente Associati GEB Partners explain. An agreement for the automatic exchange of country-by-country reports (CbCR) between Italy and the US (Agreement) came into effect on September 27… – Continue reading
Imagine a world where Indian tax authorities can look at a document to see whether a multinational company is paying taxes commensurate to the profit it generates in India. The genesis of such a world lies in OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project. Back in 2015, the Organisation for… – Continue reading
(Bloomberg) — The Philippine government plans to target additional companies in its crackdown on tax evasion, said Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez “We are on a roll, and this is part of the president’s program to make our country more law abiding,” Dominguez told Bloomberg Television’s Kathleen Hays in an interview… – Continue reading
Kenneth Moyes, brother of Manchester United’s former manager David Moyes, has been disqualified as director for five years after the Insolvency Service found he withdrew cash from his company to avoid paying tax Moyes was the owner of Glasgow-based Professional Pre Season Tours, which was involved in arranging pre-season tours… – Continue reading
The Japanese and Danish governments announced on October 11 that they had signed a new agreement for the avoidance of double taxation in Tokyo. The Japanese Ministry of Finance said: “This Convention wholly amends the existing Convention, which entered into force in 1968, by revising the taxation on business profits,… – Continue reading
Denmark’s top lender, Danske Bank, played an “organised” role in a Russian money-laundering scam, French prosecutors have said. The Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris said the bank’s branch in Estonia helped to move €15 million of “money from organised fraud and tax evasion” in Russia into France and other… – Continue reading
Switzerland’s government has begun public consultation on the automatic exchange of client information with two major – and rival – financial centers in Asia. The alpine nation is expanding its network of countries with which it will begin exchanging client data next year. The move is does away with the… – Continue reading
THE Attorney General yesterday lamented that “riding behind our competitors” had caused “incalculable” damage to the financial services industry, accusing the former government of failing to act on tax information exchange changes. Carl Bethel QC, addressing the Senate, said the Christie administration had “done nothing’ for three years in relation… – Continue reading
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… – Continue reading
Singaporean lawmakers approved the Income Tax (Amendment) Bill 2017 on October 2, 2017, which provides for numerous changes to income tax policy. Discussing the bill in parliament, Indranee Rajah, Senior Minister of State for Finance, confirmed that the existing corporate income tax rebate for 2017 will be enhanced by raising… – Continue reading
The Irish Government has published an updated version of its International Tax Strategy, which provides an overview of the steps taken to meet international standards and sets out the Government’s position on global reform efforts. In his foreword to the Tax Strategy paper, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said: “In Ireland… – Continue reading
MUMBAI: Since last month, Indians with overseas bank accounts are receiving letters from offshore financial institutions, asking them to disclose ‘tax residency status’ before Christmas. If they don’t, banks holding these accounts would share whatever information they have on such account holders with the Indian government. Many account holders are… – Continue reading
FOREIGN companies can now transfer their registration from their original jurisdiction to Singapore. This will allow foreign companies to re-domicile to Singapore, instead of having to set up a subsidiary here, reducing operational disruption to the company. Such transfers are possible under the new inward re-domiciliation regime that took effect… – Continue reading
Newcastle United are facing a major investigation into possible tax fraud which is suspected to have taken place during some of their transfer dealings, according to The Daily Mirror. Transfer deals between 2011 and 2013 adding up to around £500m are said to be under scrutiny, which include deals for… – Continue reading
An estimated $3.5 billion in revenue from large corporates and multinationals is at risk to the economy, but through audit activity this will reduce to $2.5 billion, according to the Australian Taxation Office. On Wednesday the agency is releasing the first tranche of its long-awaited highly anticipated “tax gap” figures,… – Continue reading
European Union finance ministers gave formal approval to legislation designed to dramatically reduce the 900-plus unresolved company cross-border double taxation disputes. The Oct. 10 approval for the EU Double Taxation Dispute Resolution Directivecomes amid skepticism from tax professionals that it has the resources to be effective. It includes mandatory binding… – Continue reading
New Delhi, October 11: The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Wednesday revealed that the net direct tax collection up to September 2017 is Rs. 3.86 lakh crore. The amount is 15.8% higher than the net collection for a corresponding period of last year. The CBDT informed that the… – Continue reading
Maltese MEP and former Prime Minister Alfred Sant said that small EU countries and islands use tax competition tools in order to compensate for major competitive disadvantages due to their limited endowments and distance from major markets. Along with Malta, even Ireland and Cyprus have notably expressed their great concerns… – Continue reading
A Federal Court judge has approved at least one court order that will require a British Columbia developer to turn over information to tax officials about people who bought and flipped condo units before or during construction. And several similar applications are under way, reflecting the federal government’s efforts to… – Continue reading
The government’s planned changes to the tax law for South Africans working abroad – either permanently or on a long-term contracts – has brought financial emigration into sharp focus. Financial emigration is a formal process with the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) to change your tax status from “resident” to… – Continue reading
The Irish government is inviting businesses and practitioners to provide feedback on its plans to update its international tax strategy, including how Ireland should incorporate the OECD’s transfer pricing guidelines into national law and implement the European Union’s anti-tax avoidance rules. The consultation, which runs until the end of January… – Continue reading
