PORT LOUIS: Mauritius has provided details on majority of information requests received from Indian authorities in the last one year, according to a government official. India has concerns that Mauritius, which is one of the top sources of foreign direct investments into the country, is being used for round-tripping of… – Continue reading
A good way to build a stronger economy is to create a fairer and more efficient tax code — one that promotes business investment and job creation in the United States. That is why the President has proposed business tax reform that will simplify the tax code by lowering the… – Continue reading
The latest edition of Newsbrief counts as 1 hour of structured CPD and covers the regulatory and marketplace changes that took place during August 2014. Visit the Money Marketing CPD Centre to answer 10 multiple choice questions and complete this CPD activity. Just click into your CPD Plan and you’ll… – Continue reading
This chart illustrates the location of residential properties in England and Wales currently valued at more than £2m. High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail…. – Continue reading
Corporate financial accounting and taxation are complex subjects. For this reason, many people tune out when issues that involve corporate tax practices rise to the level of public debate. Unfortunately, many legislators shy away from these issues for similar reasons. But while corporate taxation can be mind-bogglingly complex, nontax experts… – Continue reading
European Union Tax Commissioner Algirdas Šemeta has welcomed a raft of new measures to combat international tax avoidance, in agreement between the finance ministers of the G20 at a meeting in Cairns, Australia. The ministers have agreed on a several recommendations that were made to address key areas which were… – Continue reading
PORT LOUIS: Dispelling ‘misperceptions’ that Mauritius is a tax haven, its financial sector regulator has said the island nation is in discussions with India to address concerns and make changes to the bilateral tax treaty. Emphasising that the country provides stability and predictability for investors, Mauritius’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) sought to… – Continue reading
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to rollout a red carpet for investors during his visit to the US at a time when his ambitious “Make in India” campaign, which is aimed to turn the country into a global manufacturing hub, needs huge investments. In meetings over the past month… – Continue reading
ABU DHABI: President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has issued a number of federal decrees with respect to ratifying agreements with a number of brotherly and friendly countries and setting up new consulates abroad. The decrees were published in the recent issue of the federal official gazette.Khalifa… – Continue reading
Global corporations based in the UK will now have to report where they make their profits and pay their taxes to HMRC, the UK government has announced. The new country-by-country reporting template was released this week by the OECD and the UK is the first of 44 countries to officially sign… – Continue reading
Stricter tax inversion rules punish stocks of firms mulling such moves. The Obama administration’s tougher rules on offshore corporate inversions had an immediate effect Tuesday, pushing down the stock prices of companies considering such moves.But the highly technical changes to the tax code di Stricter tax inversion rules punish stocks… – Continue reading
The Swiss Federal Council has launched a consultation on changes to the flat-rate tax credit, which seeks to ensure double tax relief for permanent establishments of companies that are located in Switzerland. The proposed change affects permanent establishments in Switzerland that are part of a company domiciled in a country… – Continue reading
Thousands of Americans abroad are giving up their citizenship as the implementation of a complex new tax law causes banks to shut down accounts for US expatriates Angry Canadians are rare. But Patricia Moon qualifies. Until 2012, Moon was actually an American – albeit one who had lived in Canada… – Continue reading
The French and Luxembourg governments have signed a new amendment to the French-Luxembourg tax treaty that will significantly impact the investment structures involving Luxembourg vehicles holding French real estate assets. This amendment, signed early in September, will come into force once the ratification process by the respective parliaments of both… – Continue reading
Interpretative Act (Ato Declaratório Interpretativo) No. 7, of August 15, 2014, issued by the Brazilian Internal Revenue Service (Receita Federal do Brasil – RFB), hereinafter referred to simply as IA 7/2014, deals with the taxation of cross-border payments for the use of data centers located abroad (i.e. based outside Brazil), known… – Continue reading
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a discussion draft in March 2014 on proposals for addressing perceived abuse of tax treaties. The draft recommended extensive changes to the OECD Model Treaty together with suggested domestic law provisions targeted at treaty abuse or abuse of domestic law where… – Continue reading
The Treasury Department today came out with a series of arcane new tax regulations in the hopes of stemming corporate inversions. Inversions happen when U.S. companies merge with a foreign company while usually retaining U.S. operations. Their purpose is to avoid punitive U.S. double taxation on income earned overseas. The… – Continue reading
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, Sept 23, (Agencies): Tough new US rules on corporate “inversions” on Tuesday sent a chill through the market for the tax-avoidance deals, both pending and potential, with share prices falling sharply in nearly a dozen companies on both sides of the Atlantic. As investors sold stocks involved in inversions,… – Continue reading
Brazil signed a tax information exchange agreement with the United States to prevent tax evasion, the South American country’s finance ministry said on Tuesday, a step long sought by businesses that was held up by a spy scandal last year. The pact opens the door to a tax treaty to avoid the double… – Continue reading
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published a discussion draft in March 2014 on proposals for addressing perceived abuse of tax treaties. The draft recommended extensive changes to the OECD Model Treaty together with suggested domestic law provisions targeted at treaty abuse or abuse of domestic law where… – Continue reading
On 30 June 2014, the British Virgin Islands (“BVI“) government signed a Model 1B (i.e. non-reciprocal) intergovernmental agreement with the United States (the “US IGA“). The US IGA provides a framework for the implementation of the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA“) in the BVI. The BVI government had,… – Continue reading
Three years ago, Russia adopted new transfer pricing legislation. The new rules became effective on Jan. 1, 2012. They are in line with international standards (OECD Guidelines on Transfer Pricing), but their concept was, and still is, quite new for the Russian tax authorities. Thus the rules provide for a transition period until 2017: For the years 2012… – Continue reading
Last week the Tax Foundation released its annual International Tax Competitiveness Index for 2014. The United States ranked 32 out of 34 OECD countries surveyed. Only Portugal and France got lower competitiveness scores, and not by much. As if that were not bad enough, the competitiveness score is only half… – Continue reading
All is likely to be revealed on whether New Zealand will be an early adopter of the multilateral follow up to the controversial United States Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) in November, with late adoption something that would please the local banking sector. Either way it’s a question of… – Continue reading
Multinational companies could be robbing Uganda of billions of shillings through double taxation treaties (DTTs), a new survey has revealed. The study, DTTs in Uganda: Impact and Policy Implications, by Seatini Uganda and ActionAid, shows that many companies are extracting resources and selling their goods and services in Uganda, but… – Continue reading
India’s desire to have a global system, which will ensure tax-evaders will have no sanctuary anywhere, received a shot in the arm when finance ministers of G-20 nations took a concrete step in this regard. At their meeting in Australia on Sunday, they endorsed a plan to exchange tax information… – Continue reading
In recent years, Russian tax legislation has adopted many modern international tax concepts and practices. Most notably, transfer pricing rules, consolidated groups of taxpayers, easy electronic communications between taxpayers and tax authorities have all become part of standard working practice. However, there is always room for improvement. The current global economic and political situation dictates that new initiatives… – Continue reading
Multinational companies could be robbing Uganda of billions of shillings through double taxation treaties (DTTs), a new survey has revealed. The study, DTTs in Uganda: Impact and Policy Implications, by Seatini Uganda and ActionAid, shows that many companies are extracting resources and selling their goods and services in Uganda, but not… – Continue reading
The Obama administration announced on Monday that it will use its regulatory authority to crack down on tax inversions, the maneuver used by Burger King and other companies to cut their tax bills by moving their tax home outside the United States. “We’ve recently seen a few large corporations announce… – Continue reading
The issue of international assignees was, for a long time, limited to a small number of companies – meaning only those that operated on an international scale. But in recent years, global expansion has shifted into focus for the larger business community. As a result, the challenges and best practices… – Continue reading
A lack of anti-avoidance tax law and cuts to public services are contributing to the UK’s yawning tax gap. New research by Tax Research LLP, on behalf of the Public and Commercial Services Union, shows that the tax gap – defined as “the difference between the tax that should be paid in the UK if the taxsystem worked as parliament and… – Continue reading
The beautiful part is the administration did it without Congress. Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist to Vice President Biden, is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and author of “Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?” among other books. Well, would you look at… – Continue reading
The new global standard, as formulated by OECD in July, would be common for all countries The G20 on Sunday decided to put in place a mechanism for automatic exchange of tax information between various countries by 2017, a development which will help India in dealing with the menace of… – Continue reading
Scotland would not be alone in having its own tax rate from April 2016 – and holding onto the resulting revenues – if UK company directors had their way. According to a survey by the Institute of Directors (IoD), more than two-thirds of managing directors favour tax powers being devolved… – Continue reading
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D – Illinois) and Sherrod Brown (D – Ohio) have introduced a bill – the Pay What You Owe Before You Go Act of 2014 – into the Senate that would require multinational corporations to settle their United States tax bill before using corporate inversions to… – Continue reading
Plans to curb tax avoidance will hit Ireland. Most countries are set to force multinationals to pay more tax and as the political controversy grows, our own role in these activities will come under ever increasing scrutiny On Tuesday the OECD, the Paris-based club of the world’s richest economies, published… – Continue reading
On 11 September 2014, Business BVI held its Annual Asia conference in Hong Kong — ‘Pivoting to Asia: the pathway to new opportunities’. Paul Christopher, managing partner of Mourant Ozannes’ Hong Kong office, appeared as a panellist in a key panel discussion on the event’s programme, entitled ‘The BVI-HK connection:… – Continue reading
Archaic rules mean the world sees us as a tax haven Think of tax havens and you’ll probably think of Switzerland, Isle of Man and Luxembourg but for the rest of the world, they think of us. You see the UK’s quirky and ancient laws mean we have rules that… – Continue reading
As the finance ministers and central bank governors from the world’s 20 largest economies gather in a convention centre in the Australian city of Cairns this weekend, anti-capitalist protesters will likely accuse them of doing the bidding of the globe’s all-powerful multinational corporations. But the Group of 20’s financial chieftains… – Continue reading
ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Thursday ruled out possibility of the recovery of billions of dollars stashed in Swiss banks any time soon. ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Thursday ruled out possibility of the recovery of billions of dollars stashed in Swiss banks any time soon. The minister… – Continue reading
GORDON BROWN AND DAVID CAMERON HAVE PROMISED GREATER DEVOLUTION OF TAX AND WELFARE POWERS TO SCOTLAND. With the amount of coverage for the Scottish vote today it can’t have gone unnoticed that Scotland is remaining a part of the UK – for now. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t… – Continue reading
Clients of UBS AG (UBSN), Switzerland’s largest bank, have led a five-fold surge in the number of Canadian residents reporting hidden offshore income over the past eight years. Almost 6,000 taxpayers came forward in the past 12 months as part of the Canada Revenue Agency’s voluntary disclosure program to report… – Continue reading
Yesterday saw the release of the first set of deliverables under the OECD’s project on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). These constitute the “building blocks” for an internationally agreed and co-ordinated response to government and media concerns in recent years about the perceived way in which shortcomings in relevant… – Continue reading
The Russian Ministry of Finance has published an updated version of the draft controlled foreign company rules (hereinafter – “CFC”) on the 2nd of September (hereinafter – ‘the new Draft’). The previous drafts were covered in detail in our press releases of 24 March and 5 June. The new Draft… – Continue reading
Despite their high payouts, international stocks and funds can come with big tax bills, but there are ways to offset those hefty levies. There is no denying the appeal of foreign equities. The dividend yield on the stocks as of mid-September in the MSCI EAFE Index are more than 3%,… – Continue reading
THE CLAMPDOWN on tax avoidance by multinational corporations has been bolstered by a series of recommendations made by the OECD. Companies including Google, Amazon and Starbucks have been in the firing line for their use of offshore jurisdictions to drive down their UK tax liabilities. In particular, the companies have… – Continue reading
HONG KONG – The government of Hong Kong has recently announced that it will support the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) new global standards on the automatic exchange of information for the purpose of enhancing tax transparency and combating cross-border tax evasion. Earlier this year, the OECD released… – Continue reading
Cyprus has accepted a key condition put forward by India on effective exchange of information on tax avoiders Cyprus has accepted a key condition put forward by India on effective exchange of information on tax avoiders, hoping its move, which comes amid continuing talks on amending their mutual tax treaty,… – Continue reading
Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., has introduced legislation that would amend the Tax Code to disqualify movie and TV producers from receiving tax credits from the federal government if any of the production is done outside the United States. The bill, known as the Film Incentive Reform Act, would amend Section… – Continue reading
Tax authorities in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka state, are looking into why Amazon India does not pay value-added taxes – as required under the VAT Act, 2003 – on goods stored in its warehouses. The investigation was first reported by Deccan Herald late last month. Now the matter has… – Continue reading
