U.S. authorities have targeted Belize-based banks in a new expansion of their hunt for Americans suspected of evading taxes by hiding income and assets in offshore accounts. A federal court in Miami on Wednesday approved special “John Doe” legal summonses seeking information about U.S. taxpayers who may hold undeclared accounts… – Continue reading
The Swiss Federal Council has given the Swiss delegation to the OECD, the “go ahead” to accept the final BEPS reports— expected to be released possibly as early as the end of September 2015. This action indicates that Switzerland could implement and apply the new standards in the near future,… – Continue reading
The night that Uber started offering its ride-hailing service in Costa Rica, vandals – reportedly taxi drivers – smashed the windows of one of the company’s cars in protest. Traffic police impounded two Uber vehicles earlier that same night. Airbnb, however, another staple of the so-called “sharing economy,” has been… – Continue reading
Former HSBC Bank employee Hervé Falciani gave a USB stick with eight names of alleged tax evaders to the four Greek prosecutors who took his testimony at the Greek Embassy in Paris. According to information from an anonymous source at the Public Prosecutor’s office, the list of names includes two… – Continue reading
Consolidation in Europe’s private-banking industry is inevitable as pressure from clients and regulators increases costs, McKinsey & Co said in a study published yesterday. Pressures on profit margins could force private banks to cut costs and review the number of booking centers they operate, the New York-based consultancy said. The… – Continue reading
(Bloomberg) — Grupo BTG Pactual, the only publicly traded investment bank in Brazil, said it’s willing to consider more acquisitions in Switzerland after completing the purchase of BSI, the Swiss private-banking unit of Assicurazioni Generali SpA. “We are looking. We are always looking,” Renato Cohn, a BTG partner and member… – Continue reading
Google’s CEO may be “proud” of the way his company avoids taxes, but a Canadian tax watchdog group thinks the tech giant’s tax practices should disqualify it from partnering in a Canadian election debate. The Globe and Mail is hosting a leaders’ debate on the economy Thursday night in partnership… – Continue reading
The Department of Justice announced today that Bank La Roche & Co AG has reached a resolution under the department’s Swiss Bank Program. “Today’s agreement is yet another example of a foreign financial institution coming forward, acknowledging its criminal conduct, taking the necessary steps to resolve its criminal exposure, cooperating… – Continue reading
The number of banks with deferred prosecution agreements with the U.S. government keeps growing. The subject is tax evasion involving American account holders. Today, under FATCA, banks everywhere want to know if you are compliant with the IRS. And the IRS keeps updating its list of foreign banks where offshore… – Continue reading
There are often a few major issues on everyone’s lips in the international community of tax lawyers. This was the case also at The International Fiscal Association’s (IFA) 69th Congress in Basel, Switzerland. One of the main subjects in the congress was how tax payers’ rights can be most efficiently… – Continue reading
The trickery of hiding assets while paying millions in legal fees emphasises the case for a solid pre-nup says Vanessa Friend A High Court judge has penalised a husband for his ‘blatant dishonesty’ by ordering him to pay all of his wife’s divorce costs of £344,000. Sir Peter Singer said… – Continue reading
A civil society group focused on transparency in the oil and gas sector has criticized the interim Offshore Processing Agreement, OPA, between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and three multinational trading companies to boost the supply of refined petroleum products in the country. The Africa Network for Environment and… – Continue reading
With the agreement with the US, Vietnam has now signed the double taxation avoidance agreements with 70 out of 170 countries and territories with which Vietnam has trade and investment relations. Double taxation is considered a barrier to trade and investment. It discourages transnational investments while prompts individuals and businesses… – Continue reading
Indonesians hold $300 billion in Singapore; controversial tax amnesty on the cards. Indonesia’s finance minister Bambang Brodjonegoro told Euromoney earlier this year that tax collection falls way short of targets and must improve to provide funding for infrastructure and other projects It doesn’t take much for Indonesia’s government officials to… – Continue reading
After reopening investigation into HSBC clients hiding money in Switzerland, HMRC admits it has still only prosecuted one tax cheat, reports The Guardian. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is winding down its inquiries into hundreds of British customers who used HSBC’s Swiss bank to evade tax, a senior official has… – Continue reading
The Department of Justice announced today that Valiant Bank AG has reached a resolution under the department’s Swiss Bank Program. “Offshore enforcement remains a top priority of the department, and banks seeking to avoid prosecution pursuant to the terms of the Swiss Bank Program continue to accept responsibility, provide a… – Continue reading
On 9 September 2015, Switzerland and Albania signed an Amending Protocol to their existing Income and Capital Tax Treaty of 1999. The amending protocol will come into force after the two countries exchange ratification instruments. The provisions of the amending protocol will have effect from 1 January of the calendar… – Continue reading
On 4 September 2015, Switzerland and Norway signed an Amending Protocol to their existing Income and Capital Tax Treaty. The amending protocol will come into force after the two countries exchange ratification instruments. The provisions of the amending protocol will have effect from 1 January of the calendar year next… – Continue reading
Bern, 09.09.2015 – The tax information exchange agreements with Andorra, Greenland, San Marino and the Seychelles have come into force. They will apply from 1 January 2016. Following the completion of the corresponding ratification processes, the tax information exchange agreements (TIEA) have come into force with Andorra (27 July 2015),… – Continue reading
France has handed to Cypriot authorities a controversial list of Cypriots with deposits at HSBC bank in Switzerland, Finance Minister Harris Georgiades said on Tuesday, reports the Famagusta Gazette. Cypriot parliamentarians probing the cause of the near melt-down of the economy in 2013 have repeatedly urged the government to obtain… – Continue reading
Neo Corp International hit a lower circuit limit of 5% at Rs 33.45 at 11:25 IST on BSE on reports the Indian authorities are conducting a probe against the company on tax evasion charges. Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was up 345.75 points, or 1.37%, to 25,663.62. On BSE, so far… – Continue reading
The General Manager of the Italian Revenue Agency, Rossella Orlandi, has confirmed that there have so far been 10,000 requests to enter into Italy’s current voluntary disclosure program, compared with only around 1,000 applications received by May. The program allows taxpayers who apply by September 30 to regularize undeclared capital… – Continue reading
Switzerland will allow stolen data acquired through official means to form the basis for a request for assistance but will help India only for post-2011 bank accounts, that too as long as Swiss courts don’t interfere Geneva: Switzerland’s proposed changes on treating stolen information have generated much optimism in India… – Continue reading
In a move that could add real bite to India’s war on black money, the Swiss Federal Council on Wednesday approved a bill that would allow the government to share “stolen data” with other countries. The council, Switzerland’s highest executive authority, said in a statement: “The Federal Council initiated the… – Continue reading
A Russian nuclear energy official pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering on Monday in connection with his role in arranging more than 2 million in corrupt payments to influence the awarding of contracts from the Russian-state owned nuclear energy company to businesses in the U.S. Mikerin “admitted that… – Continue reading
UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG accounted for about three out of four job losses in the Swiss banking industry last year, even though they employ less than half the local workforce. At the end of 2014, 104,053 people were working full-time in Switzerland for the country’s banks,… – Continue reading
The European Commission is refusing to hand over documents to MEPs investigating whether EU member states are using special tax regimes that favour large multinational corporations such as Facebook and Amazon. EU economics commissioner Pierre Moscovici wrote to the European Parliament’s special committee on tax rulings (TAXE) this week claiming… – Continue reading
The number of Swiss banks that have entered deferred prosecution agreements with the U.S. government keeps growing. The subject is tax evasion involving American account holders. Today, banks everywhere want to know if you are compliant with the IRS. Under FATCA, the entire world is lending the IRS a hand…. – Continue reading
Switzerland’s parliament will soon take up the issue of inking a crucial Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) agreement with India, a move that could help combat the menace of black money and erect a platform to enable the exchange of information between the two countries. “The domestic procedures regarding AEOI… – Continue reading
Swiss banking secrecy is no longer viable as the U.S. Justice Department closes in on agreements with most of the institutions that may have helped Americans evade taxes, according to the top American diplomat in Switzerland. Negotiations with about one-third of Swiss lenders, known as Category 2 banks, to finalise… – Continue reading
Stanley Amland threw it off. So did Ingrid Bracke. Rhoda May Derksen ditched hers, too. The names, picked at random for this article from the Federal Register, are among the 3,415 Americans who renounced their U.S. citizenship or relinquished their residency permits last year. As a national debate rages about… – Continue reading
Italy’s Cabinet on August 7 approved legislation to ratify the tax agreements signed with Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Monaco. The protocol to the existing double tax agreement between Italy and Switzerland was signed on February 23, 2015. The Cabinet noted that, once the protocol enters into force following ratification by both… – Continue reading
Proposals for consistent global rules on company tax cause worries all round CLARITY or chaos? Supporters of the Base Erosion and Profit-Shifting (BEPS) project, being worked on by the OECD, argue that it will bind multinationals to a consistent set of global tax rules, providing them with less licence than… – Continue reading
The Bank of Israel asked Bank Leumi Le-Israel Ltd. to set up an independent committee to examine management performance and bonuses after the lender agreed in December to pay a fine to U.S. authorities in a tax probe. Leumi, Israel’s second-largest lender, agreed the $400 million fine after a seven-year… – Continue reading
The Cayman Islands as one of the leading offshore financial centres have a great level of uncertainty in its future with all the recent developments around tax compliance. One looming uncertainty is the European Union’s (EU) Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) passport. The AIFMD is one of several measures… – Continue reading
The Swiss cabinet has urged parliament to reject an initiative aimed at maintaining banking secrecy for domestic private bank clients. In recent years, Switzerland’s much-vaunted tradition of banking secrecy has been under constant pressure. On Wednesday the government dismissed calls to anchor the protection of domestic Swiss banking secrecy in… – Continue reading
The new head of Barclays Plc’s Swiss unit is pushing private bankers in Geneva and Zurich to double client assets in four years as international competitors exit the world’s largest hub for offshore wealth. James Buchanan-Michaelson, who joined from Coutts International in June, aims to increase Swiss assets, including loans,… – Continue reading
The Jersey Financial Services Commission and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority have signed an understanding and cooperation agreement, reports ITV News. It’s the first of its kind to be agreed with the Swiss authorities. Jersey has similar agreements with regulators in over 90 countries around the world. “I am… – Continue reading
After the leak of two major secret documents from HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm that revealed names of roughly 2,000 Indian account holders, the global bank itself has done it now. For the first time ever, HSBC Singapore shared a new list of 1,200 individuals all across the globe of… – Continue reading
At their meeting in Salzburg, Pierre Gramegna, Austrian Finance Minister Hans Jörg Schelling, Liechtenstein Prime Minister and Finance Minister Adrian Hasler, the Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf and Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble employed in particular with international tax policy, the fight against tax optimization models overlooking the BEPS Initiative… – Continue reading
Targeted tax incentives would provide a significant boost to research and development activities and help drive innovation in Switzerland, according to a new study. 700 large companies and SMEs were surveyed for the purposes of the study, which was prepared by KPMG Switzerland, the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, the Swiss… – Continue reading
In an assessment of money laundering and terrorism financing risks, Luxembourg scored in the bottom half of a ranking of 152 countries carried out by the Basel Institute on Governance, reports the Luxemburger Wort. The institute says that its AML (Anti-Money Laundering) Index is the only such review carried out… – Continue reading
Aug 24 (Reuters) – Switzerland expects to adopt a new law by the end of the year that will speed restitution of illicit funds stashed in the Alpine country, where thousands of ‘politically exposed persons’ are believed to hold bank accounts, a top Swiss official said on Monday. Swiss authorities… – Continue reading
Ireland has made “little or no” effort over the past four years to create a corruption-free playing field for global trade, violating its “obligation to combat cross-border bribery”, reports the Irish Times. The Transparency International Exporting Corruption report, released on Thursday, found that Ireland, along with countries such as Russia,… – Continue reading
In a recent decision (CAA Versailles, July 8, 2015, n°13VE01079), the Versailles Administrative Court of Appeals (CAA) provided an interesting illustration of the operation of the specific anti-abuse provision (i.e., different from the general abuse of law theory) attached to the dividend withholding tax exemption provided, in accordance with the… – Continue reading
According to recent estimates, Estonia, which is situated halfway between Stockholm and St. Petersburg, currently has more than 350 start-up technology companies – one for every 3,700 citizens – and the government expects this number to reach 1,000 by the year 2020. This makes Estonia the number one start-up technology… – Continue reading
On August 21, 2015 the Government of Liechtenstein issued a press release announcing that the Austrian Minister of Finance (Hans Jörg Schelling) has invited his German (Wolfang Schäuble), Swiss (Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf), Luxembourg (Pierre Gramegna) and Liechtenstein (Adrian Hasler) counterparts for the annual meeting of Ministers of Finance of the German… – Continue reading
Industry lobby groups are calling on lawmakers to bolster business innovation as they debate corporate tax reforms aimed at retaining Switzerland’s status as a location for multinationals, reports Swiss Info. Parliament is currently looking at a government recommendation to replace Switzerland’s current, and controversial, cantonal corporate tax system – that… – Continue reading
Banks overseas, spooked by India’s stringent new black money law, are asking tough questions of people and entities from the country looking to open accounts with them, reports the Economic Times. That’s because it’s not just those who possess unaccounted wealth who will get punished, those found guilty of helping… – Continue reading
Aug. 19 — Tax authorities and practitioners around the world are awaiting a Canadian court’s ruling on the legality of Canada’s legislation to comply with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. The Federal Court of Canada is due to issue by Sept. 30 a ruling on the validity of the… – Continue reading
