The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has signed an international tax agreement – Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters(MAC), which is now seen as the ‘gold standard’ for co-operation in tax administration. With this move, UAE has become the 109th jurisdiction to join the most powerful multilateral treaty… – Continue reading
The United Nations Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters has released, in digital format, the second edition of the UN Practical Manual on Transfer Pricing for Developing Countries. The 2017 edition of the TP Manual was launched at the UN Economic and Social Council Special Meeting on… – Continue reading
Report warns that Trump’s proposed corporate tax reforms could spark risk-taking WASHINGTON • The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned yesterday that United States President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts and reduction of financial regulations could spark a new round of financial risk-taking of the type that preceded the last crisis… – Continue reading
Governments should look to remove tax policies that distort business decisions, to unlock higher economic growth, a new paper from the International Monetary Fund says. “Upgrading the design of their tax systems can help countries chip away at resource misallocation by ensuring that firms’ decisions are made for business and… – Continue reading
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will dedicate resources to ensuring that the real estate sector in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) complies with the tax laws. The commitment of CRA resources was one of the outcomes of a meeting between the federal and Ontarian finance ministers and the Toronto Mayor… – Continue reading
BASSETERRE, St Kitts (WINN) — Efforts by one American state to officially label St Kitts and Nevis a foreign tax haven are being strongly objected to by the federation’s foreign affairs minister, Mark Brantley, thus joining Antigua and Barbuda in a similar protest. A proposed House Bill 3419 in the… – Continue reading
No rewards have been paid yet, but the agency has plenty of reports to investigate. The Canadian Revenue Agency’s offshore tax tip-line program has yet to pay out any rewards, but the agency said it’s generating a lot of leads. The Offshore Tax Informant Program (OTIP), which was launched in… – Continue reading
The Thai Revenue Department announced earlier this month that new legislation effective from April 2 increases penalties for those taxpayers committing tax fraud or evading their tax liability. In a statement accompanying the enactment of the Revenue Code Amendment Act (No.45) B.E. 2560, the Department revealed that such fraudulent activity… – Continue reading
At the end of March 2017, the Ministry of Finance called for public discussion on a draft bill (the “Bill”) amending the Bulgarian Tax and Social Insurance Procedural Code (the “Code”). The Bill seeks to improve administrative cooperation in the Bulgarian tax sector. The first set of amendments relates to… – Continue reading
On 12/29/2016, Colombia’s Congress approved “Law 1819 of 2016”. The new legislation is a structural tax reform primarily aimed at increasing revenues for Colombia. Colombia suffered a loss of revenues when crude oil prices plummeted beginning in 2014. The loss of revenue created a negative impact on its economy; creating… – Continue reading
More Americans are waiting until the very last minute to do their taxes. Last year’s end-of-season rush was intense. The Internal Revenue Service collected 29 million individual returns between April 8 and April 22. That’s one-fifth of all those filed in 2016, a 24 percent surge in late-season filings from… – Continue reading
Approximately 300 participants, representing over 100 delegations from countries, jurisdictions, and international organizations gathered in Paris for the fourth meeting of the OECD Global Forum on VAT on April 12-14, 2017. The keynote address was delivered by Wang Jun, China’s Minister of Taxation, who discussed the implementation of value-added tax… – Continue reading
SEOUL, April 16 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s tax burden, which has steadily risen over the years, still remains among the lowest among the group of developed market economies with high income, data showed Sunday. Data by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed that the tax burden… – Continue reading
The German Ministry of Finance has published a progress report on its 10-point plan to combat tax evasion, which was first announced in the wake of last year’s Panama Papers leak. The plan, launched on April 12, 2016, outlines the measures that Germany wants to put in place at domestic… – Continue reading
A parliamentary commission will consider the introduction of a new legal obligation for tax advisers to disclose information about advice on tax mitigation to the Swedish Tax Agency, Skatteverket. Under the proposed rules, tax attorneys would be required to provide details of which clients have received advice on tax reduction… – Continue reading
SIX Financial Information announced that has launched a new Common Reporting Standard (CRS)/ Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI) data service, enabling financial institutions to meet the requirements which are being phased in from June 2017. The SIX CRS/AEoI service identifies CRS-reportable client income by flagging relevant corporate actions, simplifying resource-intensive… – Continue reading
A report released Tuesday shows that Greece is among the countries of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) with the highest tax wedge – the difference between before-tax and after-tax wages, including the tax paid by both the employee and the employer. In the OECD report “Taxing Wages 2017,”… – Continue reading
The European Commission wants stricter guidelines for the “tax privileges’’ some European Union countries permit within special economic zones in their jurisdictions, to enhance economic development. The confidential proposal for the guidelines, seen by Bloomberg BNA, is currently under discussion within the EU’s Code of Conduct Group for Business Taxation,… – Continue reading
With a total of 15 action points, the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project aims at fighting the artificial shift of profits from jurisdictions with high taxes to tax havens, often as a part of an entirely legal strategy used by MNEs. The BEPS Action 13 (Transfer Pricing… – Continue reading
As a rule and according to Article 33 of the Cyprus Income Tax Law, which introduces the arm’s length principle (using wording similar to that of article 9 of the OECD Model Tax Convention), all transactions between companies, including loan agreements/transactions by Cyprus companies, must be undertaken at arm’s length… – Continue reading
Antigua & Barbuda, on Wednesday, launched what government said was a strong objection with the US State of Illinois, which has introduced legislation, listing the twin island state and 10 Caricom countries as tax havens. In letters to the Speaker of the House of Represen-tatives of the Illinois General Assembly,… – Continue reading
China’s new transfer pricing rules, effective May 1, endorse the continued use of the arm’s-length standard—the internationally agreed bedrock for pricing transactions within multinational enterprises. The new guidance, Bulletin 6, augurs well for resolving tax disputes between China’s State Administration of Taxation and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service over the… – Continue reading
Ukraine has ruled out major tax reform, in consultations with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF noted that Ukraine has major substantial progress on improving its finances. The IMF said budget execution continues to be strong, over-performing relative to program targets. The 2016 budget deficit has been limited to 2.3… – Continue reading
Seventy-four percent of UK executives surveyed by KPMG said they see Ireland as having one of the top three most competitive tax regimes. KPMG has published the findings of its Annual Survey of Tax Competitiveness 2016, which are based on interviews with 100 senior tax decision makers in the largest… – Continue reading
Dedicated technical experts from the UK’s HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will visit all English Premier League, Championship and Scottish Premier League clubs over a three year period and review all compliance risks including payments to players, the government has said. The statement was made in Treasury Minutes containing the… – Continue reading
Citizens in G20 countries would prefer their government engage in international efforts to improve the functioning of international tax rules than compete for tax receipts, says a new survey. G20 public trust in tax, a report compiled by the ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), IFAC (the International Federation… – Continue reading
Hyderabad: Shell companies are becoming a common phenomenon globally and even in India. These companies are posing several challenges to governments and regulators for various reasons had been probing their involvement in large scale money laundering and tax avoidance cases. A shell company is a non-trading organisation that does not… – Continue reading
ANALYSIS: US-style deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) should be introduced in Scotland to deal with corporate offending, according to a recent report by the global Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Foreign bribery should attract significant penalties, and Scotland’s civil settlement regime is potentially too lenient, according to the report,… – Continue reading
New Zealand has asked taxpayers for input on countries that lack the safeguards to ensure information automatically exchanged under the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) remains confidential. To comply with the new international tax information exchange standard developed by the OECD, the CRS, New Zealand must publish a list of jurisdictions… – Continue reading
As a reaction to the so-called “Panama Papers” the German legislator proposed, on 30 December 2016, a draft bill to combat tax avoidance (so-called Steuerumgehungsbekämpfungsgesetz – StUmgBG). The aim of the draft bill is to enhance the German tax authorities’ means to determine and reveal EU-foreign domicile company structures which… – Continue reading
The OECD effort to rebuild the global tax system should focus on practical work that benefits the international tax community rather than trying to get as many countries as possible around the table, a former Treasury official said. The OECD’s so-called inclusive framework for implementing the four minimum standards of… – Continue reading
Part 2: Transfer Pricing documentation requirements From 1 April 2017, BEPS action 13 guidelines on transfer pricing (TP) documentation will be effective in Sweden. Action 13 is an effort to make MNEs global financial situation more transparent. It is a three-tiered based approach including a master file, local files and… – Continue reading
Malta’s threat places it 20th out of 27 states, Pana Committee told Malta faces an annual €8 billion money laundering risk, according to figures quoted in a study presented to the European Parliament’s Pana committee. The committee, which visited Malta in February for a fact-finding mission on the island’s involvement… – Continue reading
Panama must continue to improve tax transparency and how it exchanges information relevant in tax matters to sustain growth in its economy, the International Monetary Fund has said. In the concluding statement for its Article IV visit, warned that the countries shift toward “increasing trade restrictions could lead to a… – Continue reading
Slovakia should tackle value-added tax and corporate tax evasion, the International Monetary Fund has said. In its annual report for the country, the Fund said that measures to target tax fraud and non-compliance have reduced the VAT gap – the amount lost compared with the theoretical maximum were the headline… – Continue reading
Online giant wins transfer pricing case against US Internal Revenue Service Amazon. com has won a tax dispute with the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), involving more than $1.5 billion (€1.39 billion), in relation to the transactions of a Luxembourg unit more than a decade ago. Judge Albert Lauber of… – Continue reading
The New Zealand Law Society says that following discussions with Inland Revenue and the New Zealand Bankers’ Association it has now reached an understanding with Inland Revenue about application of FATCA to lawyers’ trusts accounts. FATCA is the United States’ Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Its objective is to reduce… – Continue reading
Belgium should reduce its high corporate income and labor taxes and eliminate value-added tax (VAT) concessions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said in its Article IV report for the country. The report notes that Belgium intends to reduce its high personal income tax and social security contribution rates in… – Continue reading
Money will be used to hire more auditors and develop computer systems to “target high-risk international tax” evasion. Tax auditors and fraud investigators have been given more than half a billion dollars to pursue tax cheats, and the government expects them to collect five times that much in additional taxes…. – Continue reading
Governments around the world are losing as much as half a trillion US dollars (£400 billion) a year in tax revenue due to so-called “profit shifting” by multinational companies, according to research. The research published by the Tax Justice Network found that poorer countries were hardest-hit by the practice, which… – Continue reading
ISLAMABAD: After Federal Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar took a ‘principled stand’, Pakistani and Swiss authorities are scheduled to ink a revised convention on avoidance of double taxation agreement today (Tuesday) here in the federal capital, enabling the Pakistani authorities to get information about dirty untaxed money of $200 billion… – Continue reading
The European Parliament’s Panama Papers investigative committee is preparing for a “fact-finding” visit with counterparts in the U.S. Congress, as well as officials from the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service. The European Union lawmakers’ four-day U.S. trip, which begins March 21, will include a visit to Delaware for meetings… – Continue reading
Multinational companies are now paying tax based on their Australian profits instead of shifting income to low-tax countries, officials say. CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA—Facebook, Google and other multinational companies are now paying tax in Australia based on their Australian profits instead of shifting income to low-tax countries since the government cracked down… – Continue reading
The OECD and the International Monetary Fund have submitted to the Group of Twenty (G-20) nations a report on improving tax certainty for businesses. The report follows a global survey of more than 700 large, multinational businesses and a survey of 25 advanced nation tax administrations. The report highlights several… – Continue reading
Beware of the dreaded inheritance tax and changes to it from April 2017! Approximately 1.3 million Britons now live in Australia and Brexit may only increase this number! Many think that moving to Australia means they no longer need to worry about UK tax, but often they are not fully… – Continue reading
(HP) A new law which was voted last month is set to ensure an exclusive residence permit in Luxembourg to high net worth investors, entrepreneurs and talent from outside the European Union. Due to be published early June, the draft law introduces five new residence permits, putting in place new… – Continue reading
Spain could make its tax system more efficient by scrapping income tax exemptions and by increasing value-added tax and environmental taxes, a new report from the OECD says. The OECD’s latest Economic Survey for Spain added the country should reduce employer social security contributions for low-wage workers on permanent contracts… – Continue reading
Preventing tax fraud and stopping multinationals from seeking out tax havens are important issues for Poland and will be discussed at a G20 summit later this week, Polish Finance Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has said. “We want medium-sized countries as well as smaller countries, which we represent … not to be… – Continue reading
Last November, the High Court’s decisions in Bywater Investments and Hua Wang Bank (Bywater) confirmed that a number of companies incorporated overseas were nevertheless Australian resident for tax because they “carried on business” and had their “central management and control” (CM&C) in Australia. The facts were extreme: the primary judge… – Continue reading
The new regulations expand the filing requirements for Form 5472 to include disregarded entities with foreign owners when there are certain reportable transactions. If a non-U.S. person (individual or corporation) owns 100 percent of the stock of a U.S. corporate subsidiary, the subsidiary needs to obtain an employer identification number… – Continue reading
