One of the reasons that you won’t often find me commenting on US tax issues is that the US government have a lot of very nasty laws that they are prepared to use on anyone they think might be encouraging their citizens to evade or even just avoid tax – even though tax avoidance is [...]
Keen readers of this blog will have noticed several articles over the last 18 months regarding changes to the tax treatment of holiday lettings. The first of these was UK Budget Bombshell for Second Home Owners (April 2009). This article highlighted a proposal hidden away in the small print of Alistair Darling’s 2009 Budget. This [...]
Now that George Osborne has finally made it to 11 Downing Street and is planning his “Emergency Budget”, I hope he look seriously at reducing the headline rate of Corporation Tax in order to attract international businesses to the UK as well as stemming the flow of UK companies moving their tax residence elsewhere. The [...]
Just over a year ago I wrote about the visit to the Isle of Man undertaken by Vince Cable, then Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor who today was appointed Secretary of State for Business and Banking in the new Conservative – Liberal cabinet. Despite having been a stern critic of the island, calling it a tax [...]
To try and deal with some of the economic problems encountered last year when Ireland’s “Celtic Tiger” economy collapsed in chaos, the Irish Government introduced a tax holiday for companies which commenced trading during 2009 under which, subject to certain conditions, they would pay no tax for a three year period. As things have not [...]
“Transfer pricing” is an increasingly important and contentious area of international tax law. This is because so much of modern world trade involves the transfer of goods, intangibles or services within multinational enterprises (MNEs) – groups of companies or related businesses based in 2 or more countries. Such international trade offers scope for an MNE [...]
The Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor has been a stern critic of the Isle of Man, calling us a haven for tax dodgers. He also demanded that the Isle of Man be closed as a ‘tax haven’ and for banks receiving investment from the UK Government to shut offshore operations. Despite that he accepted an invitation [...]
There has been much publicity and comment about “non doms” – these being persons who whilst resident in the UK are not domiciled there (see here for more information on what this means). The popular belief is that these people are unfairly avoiding tax on income or capital gains made outside the UK by claiming [...]
Ken Henry, Australia’s Treasury Secretary today unveiled the first in a series of long awaited consultation papers which are aimed at simplifying the country’s overcomplicated tax system in a bid to attract greater investment into the country. Currently Australians are subject to 125 different taxes, but the vast majority of government revenue (about 90%) is [...]
