Former president Bill Clinton declined to call tax inversions “unpatriotic” on Tuesday, shying away from a term that President Obama has used repeatedly against companies that take advantage of the maneuver. Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton was asked to weigh in on the offshore tax deals that Democrats… – Continue reading
Labour could stop controversial cab-on-demand app Uber from operating in Britain over concerns about its tax arrangements. Shadow transport secretary Mary Creagh warned that Labour would not tolerate “tax avoidance on a large scale”, describing Uber’s tax arrangements, being based offshore, as “interesting”. She also seized on the fact that… – Continue reading
If the all-American fast food chain Burger King, with its thousands of restaurants in the United States, can claim to be a foreign company for tax purposes, our corporate tax system is in real trouble. The crisis of corporate inversions is now apparent even to those who aren’t connected to… – Continue reading
Dale Holmes started working as a furniture upholsterer straight out of high school 40 years ago; when he took his first job, work at furniture manufacturing plants in the High Point area was commonplace. Mammoth factories for major home furnishings companies dominated the economic landscape. The industry followed the cycles… – Continue reading
Much has been written about the poor public health and clinical capacity to respond to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Inadequate medical and nursing staff resources, inadequate isolation wards, inadequate intensive care resources, insufficient ambulances. An international emergency response is being mounted in an attempt to fill this huge resource gap…. – Continue reading
The Obama Administration, along with a couple senators, have been leading a campaign of moral indignation against “inversions.” In tax terms, inversions are a U.S. incorporated company changing its residence to a lower tax country to reduce the tax burden on its income. Because U.S. companies are taxed in the… – Continue reading
Last year, $20 trillion disappeared into secret off-shore tax havens across the world — an amount that can save 3.6 million lives annually. A study conducted by the UK-based NGO, ONE, has found that corruption, tax evasion and corporate malpractices is leading to monetary losses of the scale that could… – Continue reading
The Obama administration is employing an ObamaCare contractor that was once based in the tax haven of Bermuda, even as it assails corporations for lacking the “economic patriotism” to pay taxes. Accenture was awarded a contract in January that’s now grown to well over $100 million to make improvements to… – Continue reading
Microsoft is the most recent member of the get-your-money-out-of-the-country club. The technology giant is facing scrutiny amid findings that it is housing nearly $92 billion offshore in an effort to avoid as much as $29 billion in US taxes. Annual filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission exposed that the… – Continue reading
Since the global financial crisis struck in 2008, offshore financial centres (OFCs) have come under sustained attack. As the world’s leading economies struggled to balance their books in the face of massive declines in tax revenue, the lowest fruit was seen to be hanging from the offshore tree. Estimates of… – Continue reading
The reputation of many jurisdictions, or so called ‘tax havens’, has been attacked by other nations, most which fail to apply the same policies that they advocate for others. Over the last two decades, International Financial Centers (IFCs) have made vast changes to their laws and their enforcement, aiming to… – Continue reading
Your editorial, ‘Adding bite to the tax growl’ (Sunday Gleaner, July 27, 2014), reminded me of my question in the Senate some years ago: “How many persons have been locked up for tax evasion in Jamaica?” The answer came back: None. Fast-forward to February 15, 2012, to the submission of… – Continue reading
“The investigation of the income tax returns for each successive year reveals the increasingly stubborn fight of wealthy individuals and corporations against the payment of their fair share of the expense of their Government.” Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, 1937 “More and more enterprises organized abroad by American firms have arranged… – Continue reading
The International Chamber of Commerce, in a policy statement on July 15, 2014, has advised countries not to adopt exit taxes, to ensure that double taxation is avoided and to promote the free movement of capital. In its statement, entitled “Exit taxes: Serious obstacles for international business restructurings and movements… – Continue reading
As offshore moves onshore, will there be a challenge to the position of Singapore and Hong Kong as the wealth centres of Asia? As offshore banking becomes ever more challenging, Asia’s traditional bastions of the industry, Hong Kong and Singapore, find themselves in uncharted waters. On one hand, they stand… – Continue reading
(CNN) — Some of the world’s most well-known companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Boots and Starbucks have become successful partly by convincing us through their products that their corporate values align with consumers’ personal values. But what happens when these companies behave in ways that seem to betray our trust?… – Continue reading
I’ve been spending a lot of time reading about offshore tax evasion methods in the past couple weeks and it’s truly a staggering and game-changing phenomenon. In any multinational or jurisdiction where it isn’t yet present, it will be soon. Exhibit A: New York real estate is the new Swiss… – Continue reading
Tighter cross-border rules, less arbitrary national government policy and improving returns at home are likely to prompt rich investors from emerging markets to move assets back onshore. Offshore assets are likely to move increasingly onshore as cross-border rules tighten and grow more aligned and wealthy individuals feel domestic tax authorities… – Continue reading
The Guardian explains why opposition to Juncker as EU President is somewhat misguided. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg’s Ruritanian title carries a whiff of archaic glamour. But it is nothing more than a piratical state. The only difference between pirates old and new is that instead of using muskets and… – Continue reading
Advisers with expatriate clients, or whose clients’ investments span multiple jurisdictions, may find a more level playing field as global regulators work together more, Angelo Venardos has said. The editor of tax book World’s Leading Financial and Trust Centres said that many offshore financial centres, such as the British Virgin… – Continue reading
PERHAPS, tax is like death. With the full weight of its certainty, people still struggle to shrug it off. At least, not many smile to tax collectors when they call knocking. Hence, some people dodge payment or under declare taxable income where it is possible to do so, a practice… – Continue reading
This is a rather sad commentary on the state of democracy today. For we’ve a senior UK politician, Margaret, Lady Hodge, appearing to demand that Apple AAPL +0.66% acts against international tax law when considering its price and tax policies. At the heart of this is the system known as… – Continue reading
In Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens, Nicholas Shaxson, a former Financial Times and Economist correspondent, argues that tax havens play a central role in a number of crises, including economic stagnation, countries facing bankruptcy and recession. The book demonstrates why tax evasion is costing… – Continue reading
Many people are mis-sold offshore company formation packages with no guarantee of a bank account Over the years we’ve received so many queries from poor souls who’ve been sold an offshore company formation package, only to discover that they aren’t eligible to open an offshore bank account (or even an… – Continue reading
Increasing sophistication in combatting base erosion and profit shifting, and the corresponding increase in transfer pricing documentation, have posed a challenge for businesses. The following article considers the tension between the competing demands. Companies are facing a proliferation of transfer pricing documentation demands. While the new requirements set out in… – Continue reading
At a beachside bar in Oistins; – a tourist district on the blue-water coast of Barbados, Frenchman Julius Francois handed over a black coloured Visa Card to the bar cashier who swiped it, and soon collected payment for the drinks that he and some other business colleagues had consumed for… – Continue reading
Going offshore means registering any intellectual property (IP) in an offshore company and delegating R&D and marketing to onshore companies. Money doesn’t grow on trees, and taking your business international is no picnic. On June 12, the International Business Structuring Association (IBSA) held a seminar to discuss ways of growing… – Continue reading
Here in Ireland we can puff up our breasts and deny that there is anything tax haven-like about this country but the rest of the world believes otherwise. Poor Enda Kenny, who is chief theologian on the not-a-tax-haven side needs the Medtronic announcement like a hole in the head. There… – Continue reading
Just as water flows downhill, so do the profits of multinational corporations travel toward the countries with the lowest tax rates. That’s a fact of life in an era of global markets and businesses; there will always be countries that set unusually low corporate tax rates in the hope of… – Continue reading
A Piketty Protégé’s Theory on Tax Havens GABRIEL ZUCMAN is a 27-year-old French economist who decided to solve a puzzle: Why do international balance sheets each year show more liabilities than assets, as if the world is in debt to itself? Over the last couple of decades, the few international… – Continue reading
Competition takes many forms in capitalism. Financial engineering by corporations to avoid paying taxes is one aspect of this competition — under the rigors of market competition, evading responsibility is an innovation to be emulated. The magnitude of tax evasion on the part of multi-national corporations through one channel —… – Continue reading
Like a bad penny, this tax repatriation idea just keeps coming back. You know, the one where you offer a bribe to multinational corporations in the form of a big tax cut to “repatriate” their foreign earnings. In this case, members on both sides of the aisle are conspiring to… – Continue reading
The Cayman Islands needs to be more assertive in addressing its reputation as a so-called tax haven, that according to chairman of the Cayman Islands Stock Exchange Anthony Travers. A recent report by US-based watchdog groups Citizens For Tax Justice and the US PIRG named the Cayman Islands as one… – Continue reading
Despite international efforts to clamp down on offshore tax havens, small offshore havens for tax dodging and money laundering are becoming even busier. As the international community focuses on well-known havens like Switzerland and the British Virgin Islands, small remote outposts have become more popular, according to the International Consortium of Investigative… – Continue reading
In the latest attempt elevating the long-standing issue, a United Nations report has called for a fight against cross-border tax evasion — as in the kind of “smart” accounting that has let high-profile multinationals such as Apple, Google and Starbucks save billions in taxes for years. A US Senate… – Continue reading
Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse is set to plead guilty to helping thousands of Americans cheat Uncle Sam. At the same time, the federal government is chasing taxpayers who hid their money overseas. It seems a good time to ask what’s fair and just in tax-evasion cases. You can’t throw… – Continue reading
How come different attempts to measure wealth inequality come up with different answers? + That’s a question raised by the Financial Times’ analysis of Thomas Piketty’s work on inequality, which compared his data set to others and identified discrepancies, particularly when using one experimental survey in the United Kingdom. +… – Continue reading
We see signs of it every day: We hit bone-jarring potholes as we drive. We face long detours as bridges are closed for emergency repairs. When water mains break, businesses must temporarily close and homeowners have to boil their water. Too many of our kids attend schools that have leaky… – Continue reading
I run Craftsman House Gallery & Café in St. Petersburg. As a small-business owner, I’m proud to support my community and my country by paying my fair share in taxes. It’s distressing to me, however, that many of our country’s multinational corporate giants don’t feel the same way. Some don’t… – Continue reading
I am not a financial advisor or consultant and this column is presented only to help explain to many senior citizens what appears to be a warning currently making the rounds on the Internet. In my research of the notice the online truth digging site of “TruthorFiction.com” has provided their… – Continue reading
NEW YORK – According to a report from Bloomberg, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is keeping an ever growing share of its cash reserves outside of the U.S. to use for acquisitions. In a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Google revealed that it currently has more than $ 30 billion… – Continue reading
Increasing numbers of the wealthy global elite are saying goodbye to their home country and taking up residence elsewhere in an effort to preserve their riches. Popular destination countries like Cyprus, Spain and Australia have programs that offer a path to citizenship or permanent residency — for those who can… – Continue reading
Is every item buried in Table S-9 of the President’s budget a big can of worms? The only one I understand is big like a roadside attraction. By my count it’s item 237 out of 373: “Provide for reciprocal reporting of information in connection with the implementation of FATCA.” FATCA… – Continue reading
Activists outside the offices of Chevron in Houston, Texas called for oil companies to accept strong rules to implement the transparency provisions in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Bill in 2012. Oxfam members portrayed oil companies as monkeys in the “see no evil, speak no evil” proverb. Photo: Scott Dalton… – Continue reading
A new report from the advocacy group Citizens for Tax Justice finds that 301 Fortune 500 companies hold a combined $2 trillion offshore, collectively avoiding $550 billion in U.S. corporate income taxes, while a contrasting report from the Tax Foundation found that U.S. multinational corporations reported paying more than $128… – Continue reading
Our elected officials in Washington, D.C., talk a good game when it comes to supporting the needs of small-business owners like my husband and I. We run Blockwise Engineering, a manufacturing equipment business in Tempe. Like all good small-business owners, we do our civic duty and pay our fair share… – Continue reading
If Washington closes offshore tax loopholes, we can fix many of our infrastructure problems and create new jobs. America has an infrastructure crisis. We see signs of it every day: We hit bone-jarring potholes as we drive. We face long detours as bridges are closed for emergency repairs. When water… – Continue reading
The haters say it would be too difficult to shut down international tax havens. But the tax haven business has seen better days. T homas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been praised to the skies for its historical analysis of income inequality. But one aspect of Capital that many people have dismissed is his… – Continue reading
You’ve seen a recurring headline at the top of the business section this year: “ABC Corp. buys XYZ Inc. in multibillion merger.” When one company buys another, it’s typically done because there’s a fundamental belief that the sum is greater than the parts (Apple for Dr. Dre’s Beats Music, for… – Continue reading
According to David Cameron, “aggressive” tax avoidance is “morally wrong”. His Chancellor agrees. George Osborne describes “aggressive” tax avoidance as “morally repugnant”. They were speaking in 2012 after Jimmy Carr, the comedian, was exposed for having channelled £3.3m a year into a tax avoidance scheme. This week, the Government was… – Continue reading
