German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wants to force Germans to disclose their dealings with offshore firms in tax havens and make banks liable for lost tax income if they conceal their clients’ business with such firms, a draft law shows. Tax havens were thrown into the limelight in April when… – Continue reading
With the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the tax-collection arm of the United States government, stepping up its global sweep to catch American individuals and corporations hiding their overseas earnings, the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia yesterday held a presentation for investors and financial institutions to make sure they are… – Continue reading
Panama will take a big step towards ending its status as an offshore tax haven on Thursday by signing a multilateral convention to share foreign taxpayer details with other governments, the OECD‘s head of tax said. Panama’s role as a major offshore tax haven came into the public spotlight earlier… – Continue reading
With the exception of British Antarctica, the U.K.’s overseas territories and offshore dependencies are all surrounded by sun-winking ocean water. But that’s not their only common feature—they are all under increasing political pressure to become more transparent with their financial information. In a parliamentary report on tackling overseas corruption, the… – Continue reading
An extensive tax treaty that would shield Chinese businesses operating in the Kingdom from double taxation, and vice versa, has been drafted and is expected to be approved imminently, according to a senior Cambodian tax official. Experts said yesterday the double taxation agreement (DTA) would create a clear legal framework… – Continue reading
FATCA disclosure agreement takes effect, worrying some Israeli-Americans Dual American-Israeli citizens finally need to pay up. After years of the US Internal Revenue Service gradually baring down on American citizens living in Israel who evaded reporting income or paying taxes and numerous rounds of amnesty for those belatedly coming forward,… – Continue reading
Talks on a data exchange agreement have progressed following Panama President Varela’s state visit to Berlin. Panama is looking to clean up its reputation in the aftermath of the “Panama Papers” leak earlier this year. Germany and Panama moved a step closer towards signing an information-sharing agreement, German Chancellor Angela… – Continue reading
European Union plans to regulate tax advisers in an effort to clamp down on aggressive tax planning and tax avoidance could prove excessive, ineffective and trigger unfair competition, accountants and lawyers warn. The caution comes after EU finance ministers moved Oct. 11 to authorize the European Commission to draw up… – Continue reading
Jakarta. Tax dodgers and taxpayers who have underreported their wealth in the past and who now seek to rectify the situation should join the tax amnesty program as they will not be able to hide once a system for the automatic exchange of financial information between states comes into effect… – Continue reading
More than 2,000 files under review, 85 taxpayers under audit National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier said in a statement Monday that a few thousand files are now being pursued by the tax agency after it sifted through the Panama Papers. Canadians implicated in the Panama Papers shouldn’t expect any leniency… – Continue reading
Wales is to replace stamp duty with a land transaction tax as it moves towards devolved tax collection. The new tax on land transactions will be introduced from April 2018 alongside measures to tackle devolved tax avoidance, the Welsh government said. Land transaction tax is paid on the purchase or… – Continue reading
Apple Inc. may face double taxation on some of its profits if the European Commission’s Aug. 30 ruling inspires France to slap its own tax adjustment on the company, practitioners said. Apple could even face “triple taxation” if it repatriates profits from the European Union to the U.S., Laurent Leclercq,… – Continue reading
Current rules allow over 100,000 wealthy residents to pay a lower rate of tax, even if they have lived in UK for many years. The Government is risking more than £6bn of tax revenue by changing rules governing non-domiciled taxpayers, an international law firm has warned. Pinsent Masons said that… – Continue reading
Denmark pays up to £1m for documents from anonymous source and plans to investigate up to 600 Danes who may have evaded tax Denmark has become the first country in the world to apparently buy data from the Panama Papers leak, and now plans to investigate whether 500-600 Danes who… – Continue reading
Officials said around 192 requests had been sent to a number of countries, while another dozen were being processed as part of their investigation. The Income Tax Department on Sunday said it had invoked several tax information treaties and made around 200 requests to collect banking- and finance-related evidence on… – Continue reading
Banks and financial institutions in India have got some breather as regards compliance under the US-enacted Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). The Finance Ministry on Wednesday said that banks and financial institutions need not enforce “closure” of accounts by August 31, 2016 in respect of those cases where “self-certification”… – Continue reading
Gov’t sends bill to Congress to force banks to share account data automatically Described by government officials as a “lethal blow” to bank secrecy, Uruguay has sent a bill to Congress that will force banks to automatically provide the DGI tax bureau information on the accounts held by individuals and… – Continue reading
The US has warned the EU that it risks damaging international agreements on tax reform if it continues to act as a “supra-national tax authority”. The US Treasury Department “shares the European Commission’s concern with tax avoidance by multinational firms. The international community, including the EU and its member states,… – Continue reading
You might think the Panama Papers leak would cause the ultrarich to seek more transparent tax havens. Not so, according to Jordan Greenaway, a consultant based in London who caters to the ultrawealthy. Instead, they are going further underground, seeking walled-up havens such as the Marshall Islands, Lebanon, and Antigua,… – Continue reading
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday gave its nod for signing of revised double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) with Cyprus, a popular tax haven. It is also learnt to have approved the removal of island nation as a non-cooperative jurisdiction for income-tax purpose. Cyprus was the only country to have been… – Continue reading
SCOTLAND has formally called on the UK to close a legal loophole that allows Scottish firms to be used as secret offshore tax shelters. Holyrood politicians have been demanding action on Scotland’s limited partnerships (SLPs) ever since some of the unique corporate arrangements were exposed as Eastern European money-laundering vehicles… – Continue reading
There is little that can be done about FATCA and the change has to come from within the U.S. Death and taxes, life’s two certainties according to Keynes, sometimes have a causal relationship. One dies and some taxes are often associated with that event. Alternatively, one encounters so much regulation… – Continue reading
In early April 2016 files leaked from a large Panama-based law firm (known as the ‘Panama Papers’) brought to the attention of many the ways in which offshore companies and structures can be used to obscure the identity of beneficial owners, some of whom have used such entities to avoid… – Continue reading
The government of Panama on Tuesday announced a bill that would take a range of steps against countries that put it on their blacklists of ‘tax havens’ in the wake of the Panama Papers revelations. The legislation would impose tax, trade and migration measures on companies or individuals from those… – Continue reading
Possible EU sanctions against New Zealand could make travel harder and have a massive effect on the economy. New Zealand is under investigation by the EU as it prepares a blacklist of global tax havens, Newshub revealed on Monday night. The grouping of 28 European nations has compiled a list… – Continue reading
Nordea has blocked 68 accounts for further analysis after finding suspicious signs in an internal investigation of the bank’s handling of the Panama Papers leaks. The bank announced some of the findings of the probe into whether it adhered to internal rules and external regulations regarding offshore structures at the… – Continue reading
The “Big Four” global accounting firms – PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young – are the masterminds of multinational tax avoidance and the architects of tax schemes which cost governments and their taxpayers an estimated $US1 trillion a year, according to an Australian taxation expert. The controversial new claims… – Continue reading
THE RECENT LEAK of millions of documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca served as a reminder of what wealthy Americans should already know: Hiding assets offshore can be risky and hiding them from Uncle Sam is a crime. Yet law-abiding folks continue to stash money offshore for reasons that… – Continue reading
New Zealand is poised to toughen its disclosure rules for offshore trusts in the wake of the massive data leak known as the “Panama Papers.” Tax expert John Shewan on Monday released a report recommending a big increase in the amount of information disclosed when a foreign trust sets up,… – Continue reading
But Brexit May Upend Data Protection and Notification Rules Lawmakers and legal analysts are still struggling to analyze the impact of the June 23 referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union (see Brexit: What’s Next for Privacy, Policing, Surveillance?). In the wake of a majority of U.K. voters opting… – Continue reading
British multinational companies face new withholding taxes that may cost hundreds of billions of euros a year if U.K. voters decide to leave the European Union, international tax specialists say. A so-called Brexit “would have a major impact” on British corporations that have subsidiaries in the EU, said Daniel Gutmann,… – Continue reading
The seeds of Canadian corporations hiding billions of dollars in offshore tax havens were sown more than 40 years ago, after the Canadian government pursued a series of tax treaties with tiny Caribbean and European nations. The 92 tax treaties now signed with countries such as Barbados, Jamaica and Malta… – Continue reading
A new double tax treaty between France and Singapore will be of particular help to French companies operating in Singapore, especially in the construction industry, an expert has said. Franck Lagorce, an expert in French tax at Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-law.com was commenting following an announcement from… – Continue reading
The legislature’s Finance Committee yesterday approved an anti-tax evasion bill, which, if passed into law, would subject all companies registered overseas to the 17 percent corporate income tax. While supportive of the legislation, the committee voted 7-5 in favor of allowing the Cabinet to set the implementation date to avoid… – Continue reading
It was quite a revelation when leaked documents, made public in April, showed that Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm, had helped 14,000 clients worldwide create offshore accounts to conceal assets or dodge taxes. On Monday, a report by The Times found that there were at least 2,400 clients based… – Continue reading
The EU’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) has been unable to reach agreement on the European Commission’s proposed anti tax avoidance directive. The issue has therefore been postponed until the next ECOFIN meeting in June. The European Commission announced its proposed anti-tax avoidance directive (ATAD) in January. The proposed… – Continue reading
The recent EMEA Conference of Alliott Group, one of the world’s most established international associations of independent accounting and law firms, brought together tax professionals from 28 countries across the world to discuss Base Erosion & Profit Shifting (BEPS), a project led by the OECD and G20 whose Action Plan… – Continue reading
PANAMA, widely recognised as one of the world’s tax havens, declined a request by the South African government to enter into a bilateral arrangement for the exchange of information. However, the refusal was made before the huge leak of information about the offshore holdings of wealthy individuals and entities disclosed… – Continue reading
Portugal finance ministry says it is looking at ways of preventing government departments from using tax havens after the Treasury debt agency was found to have held an investment in Jersey. The Finance Ministry says that the agency held 133 million euros ($149 million) of bonds in a Jersey-based company… – Continue reading
Reports published last week, based on the Panama Papers, cast further light on New Zealand’s role as a location where wealthy individuals around the world are able to hide their fortunes. Last month the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released millions of leaked documents revealing that Panama-based Mossack Fonseca, the… – Continue reading
China is joining an international effort to tackle tax evasion, with plans to require multinationals to disclose more detailed information on their overseas affiliates, according to taxation consultants who advised the government on the new rules. The proposed regulations would make it more difficult for large companies to avoid taxes… – Continue reading
Panama has officially signed on to comply with OECD standards on exchanging tax information, a move that comes more than a month after the Panama Papers data leak. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) officials say they have long tried to get Panama to agree to their common… – Continue reading
The closure of a tax loophole could hit UAE firms planning to invest in India through Mauritius. The Indian government this week amended a long-standing treaty that helped foreign investors to avoid capital gains tax by routing their investments through Mauritius. Mauritius is the biggest source of foreign direct investment… – Continue reading
Authorities answer OECD call to clamp down on corporate grey area of internal transfer pricing with proposal for tougher reporting standards China is mulling plans to tighten tax reporting requirements on multinationals operating in the country to help close a ¬massive global loophole. If the plan goes ahead, multinationals would… – Continue reading
Only a week after the so-called Panama Papers burst into the media spotlight early last month, the Canadian government issued a news release vowing to “crack down on tax evasion and tax avoidance.” The leak of a staggering 11.5 million documents from a Panama City law firm promised to reveal… – Continue reading
TOKYO — Do the rich and powerful really dodge taxes? They do. The “Panama Papers” – 11.5 million or so documents leaked from a Panama law firm specializing in tax shelters of various kinds and degrees of ingenuity – are shocking, however, not only to the naively innocent but to seasoned… – Continue reading
Introduction Even though a trust may be established under the laws of a US state and have a US trust company serving as trustee (hereinafter a ‘US-based trust’), this does not mean that it is a US domestic trust for income tax purposes. If non-US persons make substantial decisions for… – Continue reading
As world leaders consider what to do about the revelations emerging from the Panama Papers, Liberia’s government will be worrying about the fall-out that may cross the Atlantic Ocean from the affair. The European Union has announced it will be creating a new “tax haven blacklist”, to be released by… – Continue reading
Prosecutions for tax evasion almost halved across Canada in just three years, figures released to Global News show. Fewer Canadians were taken to court for tax evasion in every part of the country between 2012-13 and 2014-15. In Ontario, cases fell to 47 from 119 just three years earlier. Manitoba… – Continue reading
Scandal-plagued Norwegian bank DNB has agreed to turn over information to state tax authorities about Norwegian customers who have held bank accounts set up in tax havens by DNB’s own operation in Luxembourg. The future of DNB’s board of directors, meanwhile, was in doubt following heavy criticism that neither DNB’s… – Continue reading
