The Internal Revenue Service is considering relaxing the rules for companies to qualify for tax-free spinoffs — a shift that could benefit drugmakers and tech firms with promising early-stage products. The agency said Tuesday it’s looking into whether units should still be required to generate revenue before a spinoff from… – Continue reading
The `Google tax’ could soon ensnare the likes of IBM, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Apple and Netflix, which provide online services in India. Cloud computing companies and content providers with customers in the country may be needed to pay equalisation levy on their revenue from the next financial year as… – Continue reading
Indonesia is widening its tax net to target global technology giants like Google and Facebook Inc., a strategy that’s raising red flags for fear it may deter foreign investment. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati is seeking to squeeze more revenue out of an economy that’s been hit by weak commodity… – Continue reading
Budget 2016 introduced a new tax called Equalisation Levy (“EL”), aimed at taxing online transactions. EL was originally mooted by the OECD in Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Project Final Report on Action 1 – Addressing the Tax Challenges of the Digital Economy (the “Report”). We will examine Equalisation… – Continue reading
The finance ministry has notified that the equalisation levy (popularly known as Google tax) introduced in this budget, will come into force from June 1. As of now, it will apply to payments for online advertisements made by Indian business entities to non-residents (such as Google,Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook) where the… – Continue reading
Investors alerted to risks of higher payments as crackdown closes loopholes A global crackdown on tax avoidance has forced a surge of warnings by multinational companies that higher payments are set to hit their earnings. A Financial Times analysis of company filings revealed that more than twice the number of… – Continue reading
For several years now Google has been facing what appears to be a case of tax avoidance in the UK, at some point in time, the company went as far saying it did not make any money from business in the UK all in a desperate attempt to pay less… – Continue reading
The new plan shelves one in the works to spin off Yahoo’s vast holdings in ex-commerce giant Alibaba – which could have exposed it to a huge tax bill – but the tech firm still intends to separate out its activities under the new structure. Yahoo stated it has made… – Continue reading
Yahoo has reportedly abandoned its plan to spin off its stake in Alibaba. Yahoo’s proposed spinoff had been driven by tax concerns. In a world without taxes, Yahoo could have simply sold its Alibaba shares and distributed the proceeds to shareholders. Yahoo will now concentrate on other strategic options, including… – Continue reading
One year after the announced closing off of the Double Irish tax arrangement, U.S. multinationals once again turned their attention to Dublin as Ireland announced details of the Knowledge Development Box, or KDB. This new component to its corporate tax regime will allow companies to pay a reduced corporate tax… – Continue reading
Under pressure to find resources for his promises of sweeping tax cuts, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is hoping to raise billions of euros by forcing multinational Internet firms to pay taxes on profits generated in Italy. Treasury Undersecretary Enrico Zanetti said a so-called “Google Tax” could yield up to… – Continue reading
Not going to make this easy The amazing Yahoo! / Alibaba / SpinCo tax structure has suffered a blow: America’s Internal Revenue Service has refused to say whether or not it approves or disapproves of Yahoo!’s tax-avoidance chicanery. And that usually spells trouble. Back at the start of the year,… – Continue reading
Perhaps the most quoted dictum from any tax case comes from Judge Learned Hand of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in the 1934 case of Evelyn Gregory against Guy T. Helvering (then the commissioner of the I.R.S.): Any one may so arrange his affairs that… – Continue reading
At a time when traders who bet on deals are constantly being thrown curve balls, more bad news: Yahoo! Inc.’s plan to make them rich may be getting derailed. The stock plummeted as much as 12 percent near the end of Tuesday’s trading session because the U.S. Internal Revenue Service… – Continue reading
Yahoo is taking advantage of a loophole in the tax code to spin off its $40 billion stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to shareholders without paying about $16 billion in corporate income tax. That’s how much Yahoo would pay if it sold its Alibaba shares or transferred them to… – Continue reading
Lobby groups representing Google, Amazon and other powerful US tech multinationals have launched a fierce attack on global plans to stamp out artificial corporate structures used to avoid tax. In responses to the latest stage of a two-year, G20-led programme of international tax reform, lobbyists for the US tech industry… – Continue reading
Lobbyists representing firms including Google, Amazon and Apple claim ‘fundamental flaws’ in G20-led reforms The World Economic Forum in Davos, where Google, Microsoft and Facebook executives will discuss the digital economy on Thursday. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images Lobby groups representing Google, Amazon and other powerful US tech multinationals have launched… – Continue reading
Sit down before you read this: Internet companies pay more corporation tax than the European average, in some cases many times more. According to the European Commission the average ‘effective’ corporate tax rate in the European Union and EFTA is 12.9%; in 2012 Amazon had a whopping 78% in corporation… – Continue reading
On May 9, 2014, the Tokyo District Court reversed a large tax that had been imposed on a large U.S. multinational’s Japanese holding company (“Japan HoldCo”). Under the Japanese Corporate Tax Law, if a shareholder returns shares to an issuing company (i.e., the issuing company acquires treasury shares), a portion… – Continue reading
The Hackett Group predicted in a 2012 report that this year would be the start of an eight-year death of offshoring to India Yahoo! just made about $9 billion in cash from Alibaba Group’s initial public offering, and investors are licking their lips at the thought of how Marissa Mayer… – Continue reading
Yahoo! just made about $9 billion in cash from Alibaba Group’s initial public offering, and investors are licking their lips at the thought of how Marissa Mayer might spend it. Snapchat? AOL? Well, here’s one area you shouldn’t expect her to invest in: offshoring more jobs to India. The company… – Continue reading
George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer over here in the UK, has just announced at the Conservative party conference that he’ll be changing the tax laws to make sure that Google GOOGL +0.16% and other tech multinationals (Facebook, Microsoft MSFT -0.17%, possibly Apple AAPL +0.64%, among them) end up… – Continue reading
Yahoo is one of the weirdest companies in the world. That’s because it appears to be worth less than nothing. Here’s the best way to see this: Yahoo passively owns large swathes of two Asian internet companies — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and a Japanese firm called Yahoo Japan. Add… – Continue reading
Twitter is the latest major internet multinational to have opened up a Spanish subsidiary. But the popular micro-blogging site has followed in the footsteps of Google, Apple, Facebook and Linkedin, all of whom keep their Spanish corporate taxes down to the bare minimum by shifting their income to Ireland. Created… – Continue reading
The G20 finance ministers have once again agreed to cooperate to counter aggressive cross-border tax avoidance by multinationals. Many US firms are using tax avoidance schemes for their non-US earnings while they shamelessly claim they are paying appropriate taxes in the source countries in which they operate. The OECD responded to earlier… – Continue reading
Group-of-20 nations agreed to implement a global standard for automatically exchanging information between tax authorities by the end of 2015, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said. The endorsement is a step toward putting an end to “banking secrecy as we know it,” Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the OECD’s… – Continue reading
Yahoo! Inc is shifting its main European tax base to Ireland from Switzerland, a Reuters examination of company statements and accounts shows, as pressure mounts on the Alpine nation to abolish some corporate tax incentives. The internet search group said the shift reflected a streamlining of its European operations and… – Continue reading
