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Austrian conservatives target multinationals and QE in economic draft


The front-runner in Austria's parliamentary election, the conservative People's Party,wants to fight tax avoidance by multinationals and backs a swift end to the European Central Bank's bond purchases, a draft of its economic program shows.
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News Analysis: A Post-Mortem for the Border Adjustment Tax


The border-adjusted tax, a component of the tax reform blueprint released by the U.S. Houseways and Means Committee last June, had a short life. Rumors of its impending demise had been circulating for months, and GOP lawmakers and the Trump administration dealt it a final blowwith the July 27 release of their joint statement on tax reform, saying they had decided to set the policy aside to advance tax reform.
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Large Companies Oppose Idea for Taxing Foreign Profits


Congressional Republicans are trying towrite new rules for taxing foreign profits of U.S. corporations, and a group of large, influential companies iswarning against one prominent option.

Under current law, companies owe the full 35% corporate-tax rate on theirworld-wide earnings and have to pay it on any profits they bring back to the U.S. That system encourages companies to book profits overseas and leave them there. The issue is often a flashpoint in debates over changing the tax code.
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France Considering Temporary Tax on Large Companies


The French government is considering instituting a temporary tax on the largest businesses in France to replace revenues from a 3 percent dividends tax recently struck down by the European Court of Justice.
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Brazils Revenue Service Issues New Rules for Debt Payment Program


Brazilian tax attorneys reactedwith surprise and concern to an unexpected policy alteration by the country's federal revenue service.

On Aug. 21, the service issued Interpretive Declarative Act No. 5,which prohibits tax debts companies have tried to offsetwith tax credits from being included in the government's new program for the payment of tax debts. The Special Program for Tax Regularizationwas created through a decree issued May 31.
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Commission Consults on Expanding EU Code of Conduct on Withholding Tax Relief


The European Commission has released a consultation document on dismantling capital market barriers,which seeks stakeholder views onwhether the focus of the code of conduct onwithholding tax relief principles being developed should be expanded beyond addressing barriers that result from currentwithholding procedures.
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Could Puerto Rico Be the Next Hot Tax Haven?


Some 65,000 Puerto Ricans left their bankrupt U.S. island commonwealth last year. A group of private bankers are moving the otherway. They're increasingly opening offshore banks known as International Financial Entities,whichwere created by a Puerto Rican law in 2012. There are 44 IFEs now,with 18 opening in the past year, according to data compiled by the U.S. territory's financial regulator. "Just in the last six months,we've probably closed seven deals for international banks," says Ryan Christiansen, president of Christiansen Commercial Real Estate, a brokerage based in Puerto Rico that leases office space.
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Chinese Government to Use Blockchain to Prevent Tax Evasion

  • By Bei Xi Xu

The Chinese government plans to use blockchain technology for taxation and the issuance of electronic invoices, inwhatwill be the first ever blockchain project to apply to financial and taxation business.
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Singapore Advocates for Tax Certainty for Business in the Digital Economy


As countries diverge on their positions on the taxation of the digital economy, Singapore has clarified its own approach,which includes ensuring tax certainty for businesses, achieving tax neutrality between traditional and digital businesses, and reaching international consensus.
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Ukraine Clarifies Application of Tax Treaty With U.K.


The Ukrainian State Fiscal Service (SFS) has released Guidance Letter 1531/6/99-99-15-02-02-15/IPK (dated August 8), inwhich it clarified the application of Ukraine's tax treatywith the United Kingdom to royalty payments that a Ukrainian legal entity makes to a U.K. resident.
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Saudi Arabia Sets December Deadline for VAT Registration


Saudi Arabia has set a Dec. 20 deadline for mandatory VAT registration, endingweeks of speculation.

The Saudi VAT law, gazetted July 28, referred to a deadline of "30 days" from its publicationwithout a specific date, sparking speculation from professional advisers and media that businesses liable to pay VAT had only until Aug. 26 or 27 to register.
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U.K. Government to Seek Customs, VAT, and Excise Powers Soon


The U.K.will publish a customs bill in the autumn thatwould give the government powers to operate stand-alone customs, VAT, and excise systems to prepare for the possibility that the U.K. and EU are unable to come to a satisfactory post-Brexit customs agreement.
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News Analysis: New Transfer Pricing Challenge in Chinas Domestic Transactions


Chinese tax law provides that transactions between domestic related partieswith the same tax burden are generally not subject to transfer pricing adjustments if the transactions do not directly or indirectly decrease China's overall tax revenue. However, Chinese companies may face a new transfer pricing challenge in this area.
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U.K. Brexit Plans Hint at New VAT, Customs Regime


Bloomberg

The U.K. Government's suggestion for a standalone VAT regime has started to unfold in a recently published policy paper on the country's future customs arrangementsÔøΩto ensure "the UK is prepared for all possible outcomes."
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EU Mulls Options for Sanctions for Tax Haven Blacklist


Bloomberg

European Union member states are considering various options for sanctions on countries that end up on the EU's tax haven blacklist, including a flexible approach that could lead to different EU countries imposing different measures against the same offending jurisdiction.
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Estonia Welcomes Chance to Steer in EU Digital Tax Storm


Bloomberg

EU presidency holder Estonia has committed to doubling down on solving the bloc's tricky digital economy tax issueswhen EU finance ministers meet Sept. 15-16, following revelations U.S.-based Airbnb paid only about 100,000 euros ($117,000) in taxes in France in 2016.
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CCCTBs Research and Development Provisions Insufficient, EU Working Paper Finds


The European Commission's most recent Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) proposal includes research and development provisions but is not ambitious enough on its own to reach the European Union's target of investing 3 percent of GDP in R&D by 2020, according to an EUworking paper.
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Brexit stokes tax fight between Ireland and EU


Ireland has loudly proclaimed its unitywith rest of the EU since Britain voted to leave the bloc, but a clash over the Irish low-tax regime could shatter the cohesion.

In Irish business circles, Brexit has triggered a brainstorm on how best to use it as an opportunity to push back on the EU's crackdown on Irish tax policy.

Their nuclear option: "Irexit."
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German Authorities Discuss Controversial VAT Measures for Foreign Websites


When the finance ministers of Germany's 16 states concluded a conference in May on how to combat VAT fraud related to online sales, they issued a release saying that solutions under review include a requirement for online platforms to remit tax directly.what they didn't announce publiclywas that they are also considering requirements thatwould makewebsite operators post confidential information about their companies online in machine-readable format and provide details about credit card and other payment flows from customers.
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Brazil Simplifies Regulations to Ease World's Worst Tax Reporting Burden


Brazil's Finance Ministry on August 7 announced a series of measures intended to simplify tax reporting requirements for the nation's business sector. Practitioners say the measures could help soften Brazil's reputation for making businesses jump through often redundant hoops to complywith tax reporting obligations.
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France and Germany Plan Tax Crackdown on U.S. Tech Giants


France isworkingwith Germany and other partners to plug loopholes that have allowed U.S. tech giants like Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to minimize taxes and grab market share in Europe at the expense of the continent's own companies.

Francewill propose the "simpler rules" for a "real taxation" of tech firms at a meeting of European Union officials due mid-September in Tallinn, Estonia, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said in an interview in his Paris office on Friday, complaining that Europe-wide initiatives are proving too slow.
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Tax-driven wealth chains: A multiple case study of tax avoidance in the Finnish mining sector


This paper contributes to recent discussions of corporate tax avoidance and globalwealth chains. Drawing on multiple case studies,we outline the key strategies adopted by Finnish mining companies as they seek to lower their tax burden. After screening the accounts of the companies mining metallic ores in Finland,we provide an in-depth analysis of the tax avoidance arrangements at three of these mines. The mineswere operated by two Canadian enterprises that utilized seven different tax avoidance arrangements.
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The Platform for Collaboration on Tax Invites Comments on a Draft Toolkit on the Taxation of Offshore Indirect Transfers of Assets

  • By The Platform for Collaboration on Tax

The Platform for Collaboration on Tax – a joint initiative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), OECD, United Nations andworld Bank Group – is seeking public feedback on a draft toolkit designed to help developing countries tackle the complexities of taxing offshore indirect transfers of assets, a practice bywhich some multinational corporations try to minimize their tax liability.
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U.S. Multinationals and Cash Holdings


U.S. multinational firms hold significantly more cash than domestic firms. I study this cash differential using a dynamic model featuring corporate physical and intangible investment, cross-border decisions, and financial policies. I find that the cash differential diminishes by 42% if repatriation costs are set to zero. Hence, costly repatriation induces cash accumulation offshore.
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Uncovering Offshore Financial Centers: Conduits and Sinks in the Global Corporate Ownership Network


Multinational corporations use highly complex structures of parents and subsidiaries to organize their operations and ownership. Offshore Financial Centers (OFCs) facilitate these structures through low taxation and lenient regulation, but are increasingly under scrutiny, for instance for enabling tax avoidance. Therefore, the identification of OFC jurisdictions has become a politicized and contested issue.we introduce a novel data-driven approach for identifying OFCs based on the global corporate ownership network, inwhich over 98 million firms (nodes) are connected through 71 million ownership relations.
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Netherlands, U.K. Are Largest Financial Conduits to Tax Havens, Report Says


The Netherlands and the U.K. are the two largest conduit financial centers, channeling 37 percent of all corporate offshore investment to and from tax havens, according to a new report.
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Lessons From India's Ambitious Tax Reform Adventure


Will tax reform necessarily contribute to economic growth? It's tempting to answerwith a resounding yes, but the better response is more cautious. The outcome depends on the details, suggesting that stakeholderswould dowell to manage their expectations.

The relative success of any tax reform effort is partly a function of one's starting point. The greater your preexisting inefficiencies, the stronger the potential for reform to be transformative. A useful illustration is provided by India's recent experience.
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Post-Brexit Luxembourg May Be More Attractive with Tax Reform, OECD Says


Luxembourg's financial center could become more attractive after Brexit as it implements anti-tax-avoidance legislation, including the outcomes of the base erosion and profit-shifting project, to help level the playing field in corporate taxation, a new OECD report says.
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Brazil's Rejection of VAT on Web Ads a Boost for Google, Facebook


Internet giants Google and Facebook havewon important court victories in Brazil, reversing the taxation of their advertising revenue by Brazilian states.

In separate cases, the tax court of Sao PauloÔøΩBrazil's business center and its key financial stateÔøΩruled that the internet advertising revenue of both Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Facebook Inc. aren't subject to value-added tax (ICMS), the main source of revenue for Brazil's states.
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France and Germany Revive Discussions About Tax Harmonization, FTT


Although the years-long efforts by the governments of France and Germany to persuade other EU member states to adopt a common corporate tax base and a financial transaction tax (FTT) appeared recently to be going nowhere, high-level officials in both countries have started talking up the two proposals again in recentweeks.
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EU Takes Legal Action Against Portugal, Two Others on Tax Deals


The European Commission launched legal proceedings against Portugal, Bulgaria, and Cyprus for not adopting, in their national laws, European Union legislation requiring all EU countries to exchange tax rulings granted to multilateral companies.

The legislationwas adopted in thewake of the 2014 LuxLeaks scandal that revealed more than 100 individualized tax rulings the Luxembourg government secretly signedwith multinational companies such as McDonald's Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. The measure (EEC/2015/2376)was required to be on the books of each EU country by the end of 2016; the first exchange among EU country tax authorities is due to take place in September.
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Malaysia Releases Updated Transfer Pricing Guidelines


Malaysian tax authorities on July 11 released updated transfer pricing guidelines covering, in particular, the arm's-length principle, intangibles, commodity transactions, and documentation. This article highlights the main developments in the chapter on the arm's-length principle.
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OECD Releases Updated Transfer Pricing Guidelines


The OECD has published a 2017 version of its transfer pricing guidelines that incorporates revisions made during the base erosion and profit-shifting project.

The OECD's July 10 release of its Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations (2017) marks the first full update of the guidelines since 2010. The revisions incorporate the substantive changes made by the 2015 final BEPS report on actions 8-10 and the documentation and country-by-country reporting requirements of the action 13 report. The changes provide up-to-date guidance on the application of the arm's-length principle,which "remains the international consensus on the valuation, for income tax purposes, of cross-border transactions between associated enterprises," according to an OECD press release.
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OECD releases the draft contents of the 2017 update to the OECD Model Tax Convention

  • By OECD

The OECD Committee on Fiscal Affairs has just released the draft contents of the 2017 update to the OECD Model Tax Convention prepared by the Committee'sworking Party 1. The update has not yet been approved by the Committee on Fiscal Affairs or by the OECD Council, although, as noted below, significant parts of the 2017 updatewere previously approved as part of the BEPS Package. Itwill be submitted for the approval of the Committee on Fiscal Affairs and of the OECD Council later in 2017. This draft therefore does not necessarily reflect the final views of the OECD and its member countries.
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IDFC Bank: A Bank In A Hurry


IDFC Ltd, among the more successful infrastructure lenders in the country,was one of 26 entities that applied for a banking licence in 2013. Itwas one of only two (Bandhan Financial being the second) that managed to pass the many rounds of scrutiny that each licence-aspirantwas subjected to by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The fact that IDFC got the nod to launch a universal bankwas partly due to its diversified ownership, but itwas as much a testament to the track record established by the organisation since its inception in 1997.
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EU Financial Transactions Tax Talks Kicked to End 2017


A pivotal meeting of 10 European Union finance ministers on a financial transactions tax, due to take place July 10, has been postponed until the end of 2017 at the earliest.

The 10 EU countries officially pursuing the financial transactions tax are Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.
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Russia Clarifies PE Determinations Under Tax Treaty With U.K.


The Russian Ministry of Finance has released Guidance Letter 03-08-05/36799 (dated June 14),which clarifies the permanent establishment determinations under Russia's tax treatywith the United Kingdom.

Under article 7 of Russia's Tax Code, the corporate tax liabilities of a taxpayer in Russia (whether resident or nonresident) must be determined in light of the provisions of any applicable tax treaty (or treaty protocol). The treaty provisions prevail over any conflicting Russian tax laws and regulations.
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OECD releases latest updates to the Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations


The OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines provide guidance on the application of the "arm's length principle",which represents the international consensus on the valuation, for income tax purposes, of cross-border transactions between associated enterprises. In today's economywhere multinational enterprises play an increasingly prominent role, transfer pricing continues to be high on the agenda of tax administrations and taxpayers alike. Governments need to ensure that the taxable profits of MNEs are not artificially shifted out of their jurisdiction and that the tax base reported by MNEs in their country reflects the economic activity undertaken therein and taxpayers need clear guidance on the proper application of the arm's length principle.
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Indias set to roll out its biggest tax reform in 70 years. Heres what it means


One of India's most ambitious economic reform plans in 70 yearswill ultimately boost tax receipts and provide simplicity for businesses, but the true impact may not be felt for at least a decade due to implementation challenges, experts said.
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Liechtenstein, Monaco Sign Tax Treaty


Officials from Liechtenstein and Monaco signed an income and capital tax treaty in Bern on June 28, the Liechtenstein government has announced.

The treaty reportedly conforms to the OECD standard on information exchange and transparency and takes into account the October 2015 final reports of the OECD's base erosion and profit-shifting project, designed to combat tax avoidance in the cross-border context. Negotiations began in May 2015 and a treatywas initialed last November.
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UN must defend target to curtail multinational companies tax abuse

  • By Tax Justice Network

The Tax Justice Network, ICRICT and the Global Alliance for Tax Justice havewritten to the new UN Secretary General António Guterres urging him to make sure that the commitment to tackle multinational tax abuse is not eliminated from the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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At Your Service! The Role of Tax Havens in International Trade with Services


This paper provides the first comprehensive study of profit shifting through mispriced service trade inside multinational firms. The analysis employs a unique firm-level datasetwith detailed information about service trade and foreign affiliates for virtually all multinational firms in Germany.
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Corporate Taxation and Location of Intangible Assets: Patents vs. Trademarks


Numerous empirical studies have analysed the influence of corporate taxation on the location of intangible assetswithin a company group. However, the previous literature has rather focused on studying the impact of taxation on patent location choices assuming that these assets represent the rest of intangibles aswell. This paper complements previous studies by estimating and comparing the tax elasticities of two different types of intangibles – patents and trademarks.we employ data on European and US patent and trademark applications in the period of 1996-2012 and estimate a multinomial logit model that incorporates various observed and unobserved factors of the intangible's location choice. According to our main findings, trademarks are more sensitive to changes in taxation as compared to patents. This implies that firms use trademarks more eagerly for tax planning purposes than patents.
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Effectiveness of Fiscal Incentives for R&D: Quasi-Experimental Evidence


With growing academic and policy interest in research and development (R&D) tax incentives, the question about their effectiveness has become ever more relevant. In the absence of an exogenous policy reform, the simultaneous determination of companies' tax positions and their R&D spending causes an identification problem in evaluating tax incentives. To overcome this identification challenge,we exploit a U.K. policy reform and use the population of corporation tax records that provide precise information on the amount of firm-level R&D expenditure. Using difference-in-differences and other panel regression approaches,we find a positive and significant impact of tax incentives on R&D spending, and an implied user cost elasticity estimate of around -1.6. This translates to more than a pound in additional private R&D for each pound foregone in corporation tax revenue.
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Bonus Taxes and International Competition for Bank Managers


We analyze the competition in bonus taxationwhen banks compensate their managers by means of fixed and incentive pay and bankers are internationally mobile. Banks choose bonus payments that induce excessive managerial risk-taking to maximize their private benefits of existing government bailout guarantees. In this setting the international competition in bonus taxes may feature a 'race to the bottom' or a 'race to the top', depending onwhether bankers are a source of net positive tax revenue or inflict net fiscal losses on taxpayers as a result of incentive pay. A 'race to the top' becomes more likelywhen governments' impose only lax capital requirements on banks,whereas a 'race to the bottom' is more likelywhen bank losses are partly collectivized in a banking union.
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Accounting for Business Income in Measuring Top Income Shares: Integrated Accrual Approach Using Individual and Firm Data from Norway


Business income is important in the upper tail of the personal income distribution, but the extent towhich it is captured by measures of personal income varies substantially across tax regimes. Using linked individual and firm data from Norway,we are able to attribute business income to personal owners as it accrues rather thanwhen it is realized. This adjustment leads to an increase in top income shares, and the size of this effect varies dramatically depending on the tax regime in place.
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IRS Attention


We study how public and private disclosure requirements interact to influence both tax regulator enforcement and firm disclosure. To capture IRS enforcement activities,we introduce a novel data set of IRS acquisition of firms' public financial disclosures,whichwe label IRS attention.we examine the implementation of two new disclosure requirements that potentially alter IRS attention: FIN 48,which increased public tax disclosure requirements, and Schedule UTP,which increased private tax disclosure.we find that IRS attention increased following FIN 48 but subsequently decreased following Schedule UTP, consistentwith public and private disclosure interacting to influence tax enforcement.
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Bank of China Settles Italy Tax Dispute Over Cash Transfers


The Bank of China paid 20 million euros ($22.4 million) to resolve a tax disputewith Italy over thousands of money transfers the bank orchestrated between Chinese nationals in Italy and their home country, the Italian government said June 21.
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OECD to Release Updated Transfer Pricing Guidelines, Branch Mismatches Report


The OECD is set to release an updated version of its transfer pricing guidelines, aswell as a report on branch mismatches, in July, according to top OECD officials.

Speaking during the OECD's sixth installment of the Tax Talkswebcast series June 26, Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the OECD's Centre for Tax Policy and Administration (CTPA), confirmed that the new version of the transfer pricing guidelines,whichwere last updated in 2010 and amended in 2016 based on the final base erosion and profit-shifting reports on actions 8-10 (transfer pricing) and action 13 (transfer pricing documentation),will be published soon.
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Lets talk about the tax reform in the Philippines


There are a lot of those previously exempt from value-added tax (VAT) or zero-rated VAT transactions that are being disallowed under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion. However, these transactions are usually not applicable anyway to business enterprises. Though these proposed changes in the VAT law are quite significant, let me just skip these and go to one change closer to the heart of start-up businesses.
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