In 2013, STHL and its subsidiaries generated $38.6 billion in sales of crude oil, after purchasing $38.5 billion in crude and fuel products from third party and other companies from the SOCAR group. Malta has been hosting Azerbaijan’s state oil company (SOCAR) since 2007 thanks to its favourable tax regime… – Continue reading
SINGAPORE – The Government yesterday made public its response to feedback on proposed new regulations to help financial institutions here comply with a new United States law that is being imposed worldwide. The US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) requires all financial institutions outside the US to regularly submit… – Continue reading
FOCUS: As charity trustees, university governing bodies have an overriding duty to act in the best interests of their institution. However, the HMRC’s hardening stance on tax planning and the current political climate could leave them treading a fine line between their desire to maximise revenue for the university’s purposes… – Continue reading
MINSK, 17 March (BelTA) – Expert consultations on the draft agreement between the governments of Belarus and Malaysia to avoid double taxation and prevent the evasion of income and capital taxes took place in Malaysia. The parties initialed the draft agreement following the talks, BelTA learnt from the press service… – Continue reading
New Zealand has a broad-based tax system consisting principally of: income tax fringe benefit tax resident and non-resident withholding tax (RWT and NRWT) goods and services tax (GST) Accident Compensation levies import tariffs and miscellaneous excise duties, and local authority rates on property. Stamp duty, gift duty and death duties… – Continue reading
Part of the African continent, with neighboring countries such as the Reunion Islands, Madagascar and the Seychelles, is the island republic of Mauritius. Over the centuries, Mauritius has been occupied at different times by three of the world’s greatest maritime powers. Beginning in 1578, Mauritius was a Portuguese possession and… – Continue reading
New tax charge A new regime which will charge non-UK tax resident owners of UK residential property to capital gains tax (CGT) is due to come into force on 6 April 2015. The draft legislation was published as part of Finance Bill 2015 on 10 December 2014, after an extensive… – Continue reading
Who Will Be Next? How To Respond To A Tax Investigation The international political community continues to make the most threatening noises about those who they believe do not pay enough tax. Long gone it seems are the days where it was accepted that a person could properly organise his… – Continue reading
Both China and most other Asian nations have been highly assertive in their use of Double Tax and Free Trade agreements over the past five years, as the reality of rising prices in China coupled with an emerging consumer class dictate that intra-Asian trade flows are growing as an astounding… – Continue reading
HSBC is closing all accounts on Jersey belonging to customers living in the UK. It is part of a move by UK banks carrying out checks on the identity and addresses of thousands of their customers on the Channel Islands. HSBC is among those carrying out the move, according to… – Continue reading
THE LAW SOCIETY has “denounced” HM Revenue & Customs’ plans to curb tax avoidance activity as “premature”. HMRC and the government are proposing to introduce new penalties for serial users of tax avoidance schemes and those whose planning is counteracted by the general anti-abuse rule (GAAR). In particular, the society… – Continue reading
Switzerland has made further progress on meeting international tax compliance standards after being upgraded to phase 2 of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) tax transparency review process. However, Switzerland faces a potentially tougher examination in the coming months, particularly regarding the use of stolen bank data by… – Continue reading
The ongoing global initiatives around exchange of tax information and publication of beneficial ownership information, while ostensibly in pursuit of transparency, have their origins in the need for the larger, richer countries to increase tax revenues, and the perception that taxpayers are hiding assets abroad and out of the tax… – Continue reading
SUSRIS serves as your chronicle of developments in the Saudi-US relationship, in the Kingdom and in the region. As part of our service we archive the daily news reviews produced by the Saudi-US Trade Group and selected press clippings and other resources. You can find these archives and more on… – Continue reading
In case of mobile employees, it is vital to plan their assignments after factoring residential status in India Residency is mostly the trigger for taxation in every country, with every country having it’s own rules for taxation. Similarly, each sovereign nation has its set of rules for determining residency. For… – Continue reading
Proposals for tougher penalties against serial users of disallowed tax avoidance schemes are premature and could threaten fundamental rights such as that of appeal, the Law Society has said. In a hard-hitting response to a consultation on strengthening sanctions for tax avoidance, the Society’s tax law committee says it has… – Continue reading
Rules are tangled and dispute resolution is excruciatingly slow. The government’s trying but it’s a long haul As Asia’s third-largest economy, India is a major investment destination. However, in recent years, the unpredictable tax regime has has been a major stumbling block to its potential. According to a recent World… – Continue reading
Switzerland is moving towards “greater transparency” in providing administrative assistance on tax matters, a global body today said amid India making efforts to bring back illicit funds stashed by its citizens in Swiss banks. Long perceived as a safe haven for unaccounted wealth, Switzerland has been facing international pressure to… – Continue reading
The present French Tax Update will focus on (i) certain noteworthy tax courts decisions issued in the last months of 2014 and in the first months of 2015, and (ii) the so-called projet de loi Macron (Draft Macron Law) adopted by the Assemblée Nationale in February 2015 and now discussed… – Continue reading
Court ruled in favour of the tax dept and held that market intangibles are international transactions and hence come under the transfer pricing ambit New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Monday brought clarity on application of transfer-pricing rules on marketing intangibles in a long-awaited judgement that will reduce disputes… – Continue reading
Tocqueville Asset Management founder Francois Sicart warns that hiding from the taxman is futile, but postponing taxes is profitable You can’t escape taxes, but you can gain an advantage by legally delaying their payment. That is a model that legendary investor Warren Buffet exemplifies, and it is one of several… – Continue reading
A person with dual citizenship is a citizen of two countries at the same time. Dual citizenship (sometimes called dual nationality) happens automatically in some situations, such as when a child is born to parents in the United States to foreign parents. In this case, the child (unless the parents… – Continue reading
NEW DELHI, MARCH 16: Market regulator SEBI has suggested certain changes to the conditions stipulated in the Finance Bill for extending beneficial tax treatment to offshore funds investing in India. To encourage fund managers of offshore funds to locate themselves in India, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had in his recent… – Continue reading
Multinational tech giants Google and Facebook could soon be charged goods and services tax on advertising booked by Australian companies if a proposal flagged by federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull is adopted. While multinational corporations continue to come under fire for minimising their tax bills in Australia, Turnbull has floated… – Continue reading
– The Indian financial system needs to rethink its regulatory norms The role of the banking and financial service sector (BFS) in the process of economic development has always attracted attention. The framework of the Indian financial system needs a relook if we need to ensure unhindered credit availability to… – Continue reading
The Finance Ministry on Monday notified the Advance Pricing Agreement (APA) rules governing rollback provisions in transfer pricing cases. Though the provisions were announced in Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s maiden Budget in July 2014, they could not be activated because the rules were not codified. Consultants said the move could… – Continue reading
Rio Tinto has warned that multinational companies could be discriminated against if moves to combat tax “base erosion and profit shifting” went too far. With Australia and the other 33 member nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ramping up efforts to prevent multinational companies avoiding tax, Rio… – Continue reading
A group of U.S. senators is renewing a push to allow states to collect sales tax from remote retailers that don’t have a physical presence in the state, a move they say would level the playing field between online and traditional retailers. The Marketplace Fairness Act, which passed the Senate… – Continue reading
Authorities of the Mion District Assembly in the Northern Region are unhappy about residents’ apathy towards paying their taxes. In the direction to increase the assembly’s Internal Revenue Mobilization (IGF), a Taskforce has been established to pursue the agenda. The Mion District Chief Executive, Dan Mankandan at a public sensitization… – Continue reading
(CNS Business): After months of preparation, the exchange of tax information from the Cayman Islands to other jurisdictions will become more efficient with the launch of a new online system. The Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) Portal will be launched this month and will be used by Cayman’s financial institutions… – Continue reading
Indian equity benchmarks have entered into red terrain after a firm start as investors opted to book profits at higher levels. Meanwhile, retail inflation rose to 5.37 percent in February, the third consecutive month of uptick, the industrial output grew by modest 2.6 percent in January, diminishing hopes of another… – Continue reading
The Irish Government has launched its strategy for Ireland’s International Financial Services Sector for the next five years (IFS2020), which seeks to consolidate and grow Ireland’s position as the global location of choice for specialist international financial services (IFS). The strategy includes a comprehensive overview of the existing strengths of… – Continue reading
Permal Group is moving some of its British Virgin Island accounts to Ireland, after the Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicle (ICAV) was signed in to law last week, reports the Asset Servicing Times. The alternative asset manager will move a total of almost US$4 billion from separate accounts to a newly-launched… – Continue reading
Add Ndamukong Suh to the ever-growing list of professional athletes who are bidding farewell to their high-tax home state in favor of sunnier economic climates. Suh – considered one of the top-two players in free agency this season – is leaving Detroit for Miami. By doing so, the defensive tackle… – Continue reading
Ras Al Khaimah, close to Dubai, is one of the fastest growing emirates in the United Arab Emirates. The emirate has also gained a reputation for being a transparent, tax free, corruption free, no red tape and inexpensive to do business jurisdiction. Ras Al Khaimah is the most popular offshore… – Continue reading
I hold some U.S. stocks in a non-registered account and pay U.S. withholding tax of 15 per cent on the dividends. My tax slips provide the dividend and tax information in U.S. dollars. Given the currency fluctuations we’ve seen recently, how do I report these amounts on my Canadian income… – Continue reading
(CNS Business): Even if you’re living in the Cayman Islands, the US tax authorities can come knocking on your door if you are not in compliance with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), US taxpayers residing in the Cayman Islands learned at a free seminar on Wednesday at the… – Continue reading
The UK’s HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is increasingly unwilling to believe that any error in a tax return can be the result of an ‘innocent error’, said Fiona Fernie, a tax investigations expert at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-law.com. New powers introduced in recent years to allow… – Continue reading
The Price We Pay argues that profit-shifting by corporations is undermining democracies A new Canadian documentary draws attention to the profit-shifting tactics used by multinationals to avoid billions of dollars of taxes. Directed by Montrealer Harold Crooks, the film The Price We Pay opens this Friday in Toronto and Montreal,… – Continue reading
TP Week As a result of Brazil’s unique policy to prevent erosion of the tax base, companies often face double taxation. The pending case before the US Tax Court (Docket 5816-13), 3M Co. et al. v. Commissioner, brings this issue into the spotlight. In this case the US Internal Revenue… – Continue reading
Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee recently released a tax reform proposal that is a curious mix of principled pro-growth measures and populist middle-class relief. Where it sticks to principle, it is great. But where it veers into populism, the plan collapses into incoherence. The senators’ plan is a… – Continue reading
Yesterday, The Treasury released draft legislation that it said was intended to modernise the Commonwealth’s Offshore Banking Unit regime. The draft explanatory material states that the proposed changes would implement some of the recommendations from Mark Johnson’s ‘Australia as a Financial Centre’ report, as well as plug some integrity shortcomings… – Continue reading
Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Tariq Bajwa has said that Pakistan and China are re-negotiating agreement for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income. On the conclusion of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) at the Parliament House here on Thursday,… – Continue reading
After recently completing tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) with Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Monaco, the Italian Government is now looking to agree a similar treaty with the Holy See in Rome’s Vatican City. The TIEAs between Italy and Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Monaco, and the prospective treaty with the Vatican, all provide… – Continue reading
Accountancy firms predict that a new offence of aiding and abetting tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance will be announced in next week’s Budget It is expected that George Osborne will outline proposals to introduce special measures, aimed at professional service firms, to deter serial avoiders and scheme promoters. The… – Continue reading
Port Louis, March 12 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday assured that India would work with Mauritius to avoid the “abuse” of the double taxation avoidance agreement and added that the destinies of both nations are “linked by the currents of the Indian Ocean”. Addressing the National Parliament of… – Continue reading
Under a plan baked into the White House’s budget for 2016, U.S. corporations would theoretically be forced to pay hundreds of billions in new taxes on money kept abroad. Levying fees on the $2.1 trillion in funds largely held by shell companies through an accounting trick called deferral, the move,… – Continue reading
The Chancellor will take credit for the improving state of the economy and public finances, but real policy changes will have to wait until after the election. Chris Sanger, Head of Tax Policy at EY, comments: “With this Budget announced in the dying embers of the coalition, next week’s event… – Continue reading
Costa Rica News – If you are making money in Costa Rica expect it to be reported to your country of origin and pay taxes. Costa Rica has long has a reputation as a tax haven but the government is working to change that. If bill number 18,966 is approved,… – Continue reading
Port Louis: India offered US dollar 500 million concessional line of credit to Mauritius for key infrastructure projects even as the two countries agreed to continue negotiations on hammering out a revised double tax treaty to prevent its “abuse”. The two countries also signed five agreements, including one on developing… – Continue reading
