August 22nd, 2014
This week the Treasury Department
began assembling administrative options for deterring or preventing U.S. companies from inverting—or reorganizing overseas to avoid paying federal taxes. This move follows on the heels of a strong statement from President Obama who accused inverting firms of "cherry-picking the rules.” As
he put it: "My attitude is I don't care if it's legal, it's wrong.”
Particularly common among pharmaceutical and life-sciences companies, inversions are primarily a means for U.S. companies to
avoid corporate taxes. In an inversion, a smaller foreign company “acquires” a large U.S. firm,
allowing the domestic firm to...
Continue Reading
August 14th, 2014
Last week the White House wrapped up the three-day
U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, which President Obama convened to strengthen and enhance relations between the United States and African nations. One of the stated missions of the Summit was to advance America’s “commitment to Africa’s security, its democratic development, and its people.”
As such, a core promise of the Summit was more American investment in the African continent. Specifically, the Summit set the stage for more than $33 billion in new commitments to support economic growth across Africa. President Obama pledged $7 billion in new financing; U.S. companies announced $14 billion...
Continue Reading
July 31st, 2014
This week several analysts reported that the European Union is considering
regulating and
taxing the digital currency, Bitcoin. Specifically, the EU is looking to impose a Value Added Tax (VAT) on trades in bitcoin. Meanwhile, its plans to regulate the digital currency—whether imminent or not—
are still unclear.
Bitcoin presents short- and long-term risks to financial crime. Like tax havens and other jurisdictions with lax laws on beneficial ownership, Bitcoin presents criminals with an opportunity to keep their money and their transactions secret. Specifically, Bitcoin users don’t need to present an ID to receive a Bitcoin address—or key—so...
Continue Reading
July 24th, 2014
This week the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
released the full version of its new standard for automatic tax information exchange. Under the standard, governments would collect data from financial institutions on investment income, financial assets, and account balances paid to non-resident accountholders. On an annual basis, participating governments would exchange that information automatically with other jurisdictions.
In a statement, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria
said the launch “moves us closer to a world in which tax cheats have nowhere left to hide.”
This impetus for this new standard came from a mandate by G20 nations and the OECD...
Continue Reading