International
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April 16, 2024
Corp. Transparency Act A Valid Use Of Powers, 11th Circ. Told
The U.S. Department of Treasury told the Eleventh Circuit that a federal district court erred in finding the Corporate Transparency Act unconstitutional, saying the lower court misunderstood the law's scope and relation to efforts to curb financial crime.
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April 16, 2024
Canada Expects Digital Tax To Increase Revenue By CA$5.9B
Canada's proposed digital services tax is estimated to bring in CA$5.9 billion ($4.3 billion) over five years, according to the country's 2024 budget, which was released Tuesday and cited continued international delays in implementing a worldwide profit reallocation agreement.
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April 16, 2024
Veteran's Signature On IRS Doc Not Forged, Tax Court Finds
U.S. Air Force veteran and his wife failed to convince the U.S. Tax Court on Tuesday that their signatures were forged on an agreement to pay federal income taxes while working in Australia for defense contractor Raytheon.
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April 16, 2024
3 Key Takeaways From The IRS' Latest Pricing Pact Snapshot
The IRS finalized a record number of advance pricing agreements in 2023, signaling the agency's increased effectiveness at completing accords at a time when its approach to transfer pricing litigation could fuel corporate taxpayers' urgency for seeking APAs. Here, Law360 breaks down three key takeaways from the agency’s latest APA report.
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April 16, 2024
Orrick Adds Former Hogan Lovells Atty To German Tax Group
Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP added a former Hogan Lovells counsel to its German tax group, the firm announced.
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April 16, 2024
McDermott Hires 2 Partners For Global Tax Practice In Paris
McDermott Will & Emery is expanding its global tax practice group with two partners in Paris who have a track record of advising on cross-border mergers and acquisitions and tax controversies before France's tax authority, the firm announced.
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April 16, 2024
Finland's Boost In Financial Crimes Led To $156M In Damage
A record nearly 2,400 financial crimes reported to Finland's authorities in 2023 — with 54% of them debtor crimes and tax and accounting crimes — resulted in €147 million ($156 million) in criminal damage, the Finnish Tax Administration said Tuesday.
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April 16, 2024
Global Economic Growth To Remain Slow, Steady, IMF Says
The global economy has been "surprisingly resilient" in its bounce back from widespread troubles, leading to projections of a slow but steady 3.2% growth continuing through this year and the next, the International Monetary Fund said in its annual report Tuesday.
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April 16, 2024
Treasury Gains £12B Fiscal Headroom In New Tax Year
HM Treasury may have an extra £12 billion ($14.9 billion) to spend this financial year started April 6 thanks to the government's fiscal rule to cut national debt by 2029, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said in a report Tuesday.
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April 16, 2024
Taylor Wessing Launches Ireland Tax Practice With New Hire
Taylor Wessing LLP has recruited its first tax partner in Ireland from Simmons & Simmons LLP to launch a new tax group in the country, continuing its expansion after initially setting up shop in Dublin three years ago.
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April 16, 2024
EU Leaders Expected To Clash Over Corp. Tax Harmonization
European Union leaders are expected to clash at their summit Wednesday and Thursday over whether national corporate taxes should be harmonized to promote equity investments, an official from the bloc said Tuesday.
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April 15, 2024
Exxon Seeks $1.8B Tax Refund As Qatar Deal Trial Opens
Exxon Mobil Corp. argued Monday in Texas federal court that its deal with Qatar to extract natural gas from the country's coast was a partnership, rather than a lease agreement, saying at the start of a trial that it's entitled to get $1.8 billion in tax benefits back from the IRS.
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April 15, 2024
House OKs Ending Exemption For Terrorist-Supporting Orgs
The House passed legislation Monday that would authorize the Internal Revenue Service to suspend the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit organization found by the U.S. Treasury secretary to support foreign terrorism.
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April 15, 2024
8th Circ. Urged To Revive IRS' Pricing For Medtronic
The U.S. government urged the Eighth Circuit on Monday to side with the IRS' method for pricing the intangible property that medical device maker Medtronic licensed to a Puerto Rican affiliate, arguing it's the only way to determine arm's-length royalty rates.
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April 15, 2024
EU Seeking Input On Tax Cooperation Program's Progress
The European Commission is looking for input from the tax administrations of the European Union and cooperating countries on the efficacy of a program meant to aid in the fight against tax fraud, tax evasion and aggressive tax planning, it said Monday.
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April 15, 2024
Accounting Ethics Board Issues Int'l Tax Planning Standards
A global accounting ethics board issued Monday what it says is the first comprehensive suite of global standards on ethical considerations in tax planning and related services in hopes of restoring public trust in accounting firms and corporations.
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April 15, 2024
HMRC Maintaining VAT Policies After EU Law Decoupling
The interpretation of the U.K.'s value-added tax and excise tax regimes have remained the same despite the removal of the supremacy of the European Union's laws at the beginning of the year, HM Revenue & Customs said Monday.
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April 15, 2024
More EU Cooperation Needed Against VAT Fraud, Official Says
The €11 billion ($11.7 billion) in value-added tax fraud uncovered in 2023 by the European Union's prosecution office is probably "only the tip of an iceberg" and should prompt countries to intensify joint cooperation, the office's top official said.
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April 12, 2024
FedEx Not Entitled To $84.6M In Tax Credit Dispute, US Says
FedEx is not entitled to a judgment of nearly $84.6 million that the company requested in March for its foreign tax credit dispute, the federal government said Friday in a Tennessee federal court filing.
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April 12, 2024
Adviser Urges ECJ To Toss Ad Co.'s State Aid Appeal
An outdoor furniture and advertising company shouldn't be allowed to challenge a finding from the European Union's General Court that it should have paid rent and taxes for ads in Brussels that stayed up after its contract with the city ended, an adviser to the bloc's highest court has said.
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April 12, 2024
4 Takeaways From Tax Court Nix Of Easement Perpetuity Rule
The U.S. Tax Court's scrapping of an IRS rule on the perpetuity requirements for conservation easements could draw yet more judicial scrutiny to the agency's rulemaking and shift the focus of easement disputes to how the transactions are valued. Here, Law360 examines four key takeaways from the decision.
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April 12, 2024
Australia Issues Outsourced IT Tax Credit Guidance
The Australian Taxation Office provided guidance for how those making reduced input tax credit claims for complex information technology outsourcing agreements can adequately support such claims.
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April 12, 2024
Panama Papers Attys Deny Money Laundering At Trial
Two attorneys who ran the Mossack Fonseca law firm in Panama, at the center of a 2016 leak that produced multiple convictions for tax evasion, pled not guilty with 27 others to money-laundering charges as a trial began in Panama, according to prosecutors.
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April 12, 2024
OECD Base Erosion Project Still Percolating, Think Tank Says
Policymakers should recognize that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's tax project from roughly a decade ago to reduce base erosion and profit shifting may still be affecting companies' behavior, according to a publication released Friday from the fiscally conservative-leaning Tax Foundation.
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April 12, 2024
Final 'Look-Through' Rules Coming Soon, IRS Official Says
The IRS is about to release final regulations that would, in a manner of speaking, look through the corporate owners of real estate investment entities to determine whether they are domestically controlled, an agency official said Friday.
Expert Analysis
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How Taxpayers Can Prep As Justices Weigh Repatriation Tax
The U.S. Supreme Court might strike down the 2017 federal tax overhaul's corporate repatriation tax in Moore v. U.S., so taxpayers should file protective tax refund claims before the case is decided and repatriate previously taxed earnings that could become entangled in dubious potential Section 965 refunds, say Jenny Austin and Gary Wilcox at Mayer Brown.
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OFAC Designation Prosecutions Are Constitutionally Suspect
Criminal prosecutions based on the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions-related listing decisions — made with nearly unfettered discretion through an opaque process — present several constitutional issues, so it is imperative that courts recognize additional rights of review, say Solomon Shinerock and Annika Conrad at Lewis Baach.
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How The OECD Global Tax Proposal Could Affect M&A
Following agreement on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Pillar Two proposal to introduce a global minimum tax, domestic implementation is expected to have a significant impact on international M&A transactions, with financial modeling, deal structuring, risk allocation and joint venture arrangements likely to be affected, say lawyers at Freshfields.
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UK Shares-Tax Proposals Offer Long-Awaited Modernization
The U.K. government's recent consultation on the introduction of a new tax on transactions in securities raises detailed legal and practical issues, but the prospect of a single digital stamp tax offering both streamlined legislation and administration will be welcomed, say Zoë Arnautov and Mark Sheiham at Simmons & Simmons.
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IRS Foreign Tax Credit Pause Is Welcome Course Correction
A recent IRS notice temporarily suspending application of 2022 foreign tax credit regulations provides wanted relief for the many U.S. multinational companies and other taxpayers that otherwise face the risk of significant double taxation in their international operations, say attorneys at Mayer Brown.
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IRS Criminal Probe Spells Uncertainty For Malta Pension Plans
The IRS’ recent scrutiny of Malta pension plan arrangements — and its unusual issuance of criminal administrative summonses — confirms that it views many of these plans as illegal tax evasion schemes, and the road ahead will not be smooth and steady for anyone involved, say attorneys at Kostelanetz.
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IRS Announcement Will Aid Cos. In Buyback Tax Planning
Recent IRS transitional guidance regarding current requirements for reporting and payment of the stock repurchase excise tax will help corporate taxpayers make decisions about records retention and establishing reserves for future tax payments, say Xenia Garofalo and Kyle Colonna at Eversheds Sutherland.
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Flawed Analysis Supports Common Law Tax Deficiency Ruling
The Colorado federal district court’s recent decision in Liberty Global, holding that the U.S. Department of Justice may assert a common law tax claim without the notice of tax deficiency required by the Internal Revenue Code, relies on a contorted reading of the statute and irrelevant case law, say Loren Opper and Christie Galinski at Miller Canfield.
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Review Of Repatriation Tax Sets Justices On Slippery Slope
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to review the constitutionality of the repatriation tax in Moore v. U.S. has implications for many tax rules involving unrealized amounts and could leave the court on the brink of invalidating large swaths of the Internal Revenue Code, say attorneys at Eversheds Sutherland.
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What To Make Of IRS' New Advance Pricing Guidance
Recent guidance on the IRS' goals for its advance pricing agreement system provides helpful insight into review and decision-making procedures for advance pricing agreement requests, but it also raises questions about the IRS' objectives, say Richard Slowinski and Stefanie Kavanagh at Alston & Bird.
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Reserved Investor Fund Would Plug Gap In UK Finance Market
The reserved investor fund recently proposed by HM Treasury has the potential to be a welcome tax-efficient addition to the U.K.’s canon of products for real estate investments, with attractive features for companies and, in particular, large asset managers, say lawyers at Herbert Smith.
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The Reciprocal Tax Bill Is A Warning Shot At Pillar 2
A bill recently introduced in the House of Representatives to reciprocally tax countries deemed to have imposed discriminatory taxes on U.S. citizens and businesses takes aim at countries implementing the global minimum tax treaty known as Pillar Two, with which the U.S. has not complied, says Alan Cole at the Tax Foundation.
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What Tax-Exempt Orgs. Need From Energy Credit Guidance
Guidance clarifying the Inflation Reduction Act’s credit regime, expected from the U.S. Department of the Treasury this summer, should help tax-exempt organizations determine the benefits of clean energy projects and integrate alternative energy investments into their activities, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.