International
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October 03, 2024
K&L Gates Boosts Houston Shop With Ernst & Young Tax Ace
K&L Gates LLP strengthened its Houston office this week with the hire of a tax partner with nearly three decades of expertise in advising multinational corporations on U.S. taxation on cross-border acquisitions and other transactions.
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October 03, 2024
Aerospace Co. Says Conn. Town Wrongly Taxed $8M In Assets
A unit of a U.K.-based aerospace manufacturer is claiming that a Connecticut town overvalued its taxable personal property by nearly $8 million after the company moved nearly $20 million worth of its property out of the jurisdiction, according to a suit filed in state court.
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October 03, 2024
Tax Could Help Curtail Plastic Pollution By 2040, OECD Says
Taxation targeted at plastic use could help to nearly eliminate plastic pollution by 2040 by curbing both creation and consumption, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.
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October 03, 2024
EU, Norway Update VAT Fraud Cooperation Agreement
The European Union and Norway have amended their agreement on administrative cooperation to help combat value-added tax fraud as well as the recovery of claims, the European Commission announced.
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October 03, 2024
EU Refers 4 Countries To Court Over Pillar 2 Delays
The European Commission said it was referring Cyprus, Poland, Portugal and Spain to the European Union's top court for missing the deadline to implement the global minimum corporate tax, known as Pillar Two.
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October 02, 2024
BlackBerry's $17M In R&D Not Taxable, Canada Court Rules
BlackBerry Ltd. won't pay taxes on $17.1 million in research and development services it procured from its U.S. affiliates because the services don't fit the definition of foreign accrual property income, the Tax Court of Canada ruled.
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October 02, 2024
Philippines Enacts 12% VAT On Foreign Digital Services
Google, Amazon and Netflix are among the companies expected to pay a 12% value-added tax on foreign digital service providers that was signed into law Wednesday by Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., according to government agencies.
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October 02, 2024
IRS Says European Energy Exchange Is A Qualified Exchange
The European Energy Exchange is a qualified board or exchange for purposes of mark-to-market contracts under Internal Revenue Code Section 1256(g)(7)(C), the Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday.
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October 02, 2024
OECD Releases Crypto Data-Swap Guidance For Tax Agencies
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released guidance Wednesday to help tax administrations automatically exchange information under a new global crypto-asset reporting framework and under an updated system for swapping traditional financial data.
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October 02, 2024
Mongolia Ratifies OECD Tax Treaty Standards
Mongolia ratified the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's multilateral convention on base erosion and profit shifting, which updates bilateral tax treaties of its signatories with agreed-upon standards, the OECD said Wednesday.
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October 02, 2024
4 Arrested In €97M VAT Fraud Involving Phone Service
Four people were arrested in Italy for their suspected roles in a value-added tax fraud scheme involving services that let users make phone calls via the internet that sought to claim over €97 million ($107 million) in fraudulent refunds, the European Public Prosecutor's Office said Wednesday.
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October 02, 2024
Canada Finalizes Surtax List For Chinese Steel, Aluminum
Canada's Department of Finance issued its finalized list of Chinese-made steel and aluminum products that will be hit with a 25% surtax when imported into the country starting later this month.
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October 01, 2024
Tax Deadlines Extended For Victims Of Israel-Hamas War
The Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday that it will postpone tax return and payment deadlines to Sept. 30, 2025, for those affected by the Israel-Hamas war across 2023 and 2024.
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October 01, 2024
Amgen Must Face Suit It Misled Investors On $10.7B Tax Bill
Amgen lost an attempt to escape a potential class action claiming the pharmaceutical giant hid a $10.7 billion tax bill from investors after a New York federal court ruled there was sufficient evidence for the action to proceed.
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October 01, 2024
Ex-USTR Official Sees Possible Path Forward For Digital Taxes
The U.S. may withhold trade threats if it believes countries are having good-faith conversations about concerns that their digital services taxes discriminate against U.S. businesses, including in current talks with Canada, the former general counsel for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative told Law360.
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October 01, 2024
Ireland Eyes Infrastructure With €14B From ECJ Apple Case
The Irish government is aiming to build infrastructure with the €14.1 billion ($15.6 billion) in corporate tax payments due from Apple Inc. following a European Court of Justice ruling that Ireland granted Apple illegal state aid, officials said Tuesday in announcing next year's budget.
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October 01, 2024
EU Chief Prosecutor Calls For Making Tax Fraud A Priority
As organized crime rings continue to affect the European Union budget through "massive" value-added tax and customs fraud schemes, more must be done to support the European Public Prosecutor's Office and its power to investigate such crimes, the European chief prosecutor said in remarks published Tuesday.
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October 01, 2024
Treasury Plans Final Direct Pay Partnership Regs By Year-End
The U.S. Treasury Department is eyeing the end of the year to finalize regulations for development projects to elect out of their partnership tax status to qualify for a direct cash payment of their clean energy tax credits, an official said Tuesday.
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October 01, 2024
EU General Court To Begin Hearing VAT Cases
The European Union General Court can make preliminary rulings in cases involving the EU's common system of value-added taxes, effective Tuesday, as part of an expansion of the court's jurisdiction.
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October 01, 2024
UK Tax Havens Tied To $84B In Lost Revenue, Group Says
The British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands and Bermuda held on to their spots atop the Tax Justice Network's tax havens list, with the group saying Tuesday that the U.K.'s tax havens network is responsible for a third of global corporate tax abuse risks.
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October 01, 2024
Estate Exaggerating Value Of Exec's Tax Tipoff, DC Circ. Told
A Dutch bank executive's estate is "vastly" overstating the significance of his tips to the IRS in seeking a whistleblower award for his reporting of tax schemes, the U.S. government told the D.C. Circuit, urging it to uphold the U.S. Tax Court's denial of the award.
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September 30, 2024
Corporate Tax Rates Up In 2023, OECD Annual Report Finds
A global trend toward cutting taxes to address the economics of the COVID-19 pandemic began to wane in 2023, with more nations willing to raise taxes and broaden tax bases to fund social spending, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development said Monday.
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September 30, 2024
PwC Agrees To $63M Fine For Evergrande Audit, China Says
PwC's chairman agreed to the firm's six-month suspension in China and nearly $63 million in fines over its Chinese auditing arm's work for Evergrande Group, which until a court-ordered liquidation in January was the country's largest real estate firm, the country's Finance Ministry said Monday.
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September 30, 2024
IRS Seeks Input On Draft Partnership Basis-Shifting Form
The Internal Revenue Service asked for comments Monday on a draft form and instructions for partners to disclose all the property they receive from partnerships, part of upcoming regulations meant to target abusive tax avoidance that uses sophisticated partnership basis-shifting transactions.
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September 30, 2024
German Lawyer Charged Over €428M Cum-Ex Fraud
A lawyer has been charged in Germany with several counts of "serious tax evasion" over his alleged role in a €428 million ($477 million) so-called cum-ex dividend tax fraud, a German court confirmed Monday.
Expert Analysis
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Curtailing Offshore Tax-Advantaged Investment In China
The U.S. government's plans to establish a new outbound investment regime hold the potential to arrest Chinese companies' increasing use of offshore, tax-advantaged locations to raise capital, says David Plotinsky at Morgan Lewis.
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Cos. May Want To Wait Out US-EU Green Incentives Fight
As the European Union considers measures to compete with the Inflation Reduction Act's incentives for U.S. production of clean tech, and EU and U.S. officials discuss a possible compromise, companies in the green sector should consider taking a wait-and-see approach to investment decisions, says Todd Thacker at Goldberg Segalla.
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India's Budget Proposals May Ease Entry For Certain Sectors
India’s recently released budget includes proposals to facilitate doing business in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City and moderate thousands of compliance requirements, opening up new opportunities for foreign businesses in the digital infrastructure, manufacturing and renewable energy sectors, say Mukesh Butani and Seema Kejriwal at BMR Legal.
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High Court Ax Of Atty-Client Privilege Case Deepens Split
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent dismissal of In re: Grand Jury as improvidently granted maintains a three-way circuit split on the application of attorney-client privilege to multipurpose communications, although the justices have at least shown a desire to address it, say Trey Bourn and Thomas DiStanislao at Butler Snow.
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US-India Advance Pricing Resolutions Should Reassure Cos.
The United States' and India's tax authorities' recent resolution of a significant number of pending advance pricing agreements should reduce taxpayer uncertainty, reassure companies of the nations' good working relationship and improve India's investment environment, say Miller Williams and Caroline Setliffe at Eversheds Sutherland.
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Stock Buyback Excise Tax Guidance A Mixed Bag For SPACs
Recent IRS guidance on the new stock repurchase excise tax includes a welcome exception for publicly traded special-purpose acquisition companies but does not exclude redemptions in connection with a de-SPAC transaction, and further guidance is needed to clarify ambiguities around the exception's application, say Olga Bogush and Evgeny Magidenko at ArentFox Schiff.
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The IRS' APA Rulemaking Journey: There And Back Again
Attorneys at Dentons examine recent challenges in which taxpayers successfully argued Internal Revenue Service rulemaking was invalid under the Administrative Procedure Act, how tax exceptionalism and U.S. Supreme Court regulatory deference prompted such challenges, and similar challenges the agency will likely face following this line of cases.
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ECJ Fiat Ruling Sets Clear Boundaries For EU State Aid Law
The European Court of Justice's recent landmark decision in Fiat v. Commission limiting the commission’s attempts to circumvent the lack of EU powers in the area of tax law has important implications in EU state aid law and beyond, say Andreas Reindl and Pietro Stella at Van Bael.
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Unpacking The Interim Guidance On New Stock Buyback Tax
The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service's recent notice on applying the newly effective excise tax on stock repurchases provides much-needed clarity on the tax's scope, which is much broader than anticipated given its underlying policy rationale, say attorneys at Eversheds Sutherland.
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IRS Will Use New Resources To Increase Scrutiny In 2023
The new year promises to be a busy one for the Internal Revenue Service, which is poised to apply the boost in funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act to bolster and expand its enforcement capability, and there are four areas to watch, say attorneys at Skadden.
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How Japan's Implementation May Change The Pillar 2 Debate
Japan’s outline of proposed legislation adopting a primary component of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 15% global minimum tax will increase pressure on countries — including the U.S. — that have not committed to adopting Pillar Two, says Takato Masuda of Nishimura & Asahi.
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Foreign Tax Credit Proposal Is Some Help, But More Is Needed
New foreign tax credit regulations proposed by the U.S. Treasury Department provided some measure of relief on cost recovery and royalty withholding, two of the most troublesome aspects of the 2021 final foreign tax credit regulations, but the final regulations are still harmful to many taxpayers, making litigation inevitable, say attorneys at Fenwick.
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IRS' Tax Gap Statistics Don't Paint A Full Compliance Picture
The Internal Revenue Service's recent report indicating a widening tax gap sheds important light on tax compliance, underlines key pressure points and provides insights into how tax administration could be improved; but tax gap estimates also have their limits, says Joyce Beebe at Rice University.