Accountancy Age’s lead story this morning says that the symposium they held, to which I have referred several times on this blog, concluded that "tax avoidance does not damage corporate reputations and may even enhance them".
Excuse me? Is this the same firm that was "believed to have earned as much as $124 million in fees [...]
Sen Carl Levin seems to have summarised offshore staggeringly well in his opening comments to the Senate sub-committee on Tuesday:
The key features of offshore tax havens are low or no taxes and a legal system that favors secrecy over transparency. Tax havens sell secrecy to attract business. And they are very successful. About 50 tax [...]
TaxationWeb gets insufficient attention in the UK tax world, but knocks spots off its rivals.
Edited by Andrew Goodall, who is a serious thinker and seems on all the evidence I have seen to justify the title of ‘expert’, it can be guaranteed to cover stories without the anti-tax hysteria which does, I am afraid, [...]
Most people think that tax havens are small islands with palm trees, remote from anywhere.
But that just isn’t true. For example, Accountancy Age has reported how the Rolling Stones have used the Netherlands to reduce the tax rate on tier royalties to under 2% in the last 20 years by locating their royalty collecting [...]
I like the report on the Senate Hearings on tax havens yesterday from Reuters.
Take this for example:
Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, senior Democrat on the subcommittee, said the report "blows the lid off tax haven abuses that make use of sham trusts, shell corporations and fake economic transactions to help people dodge taxes."
And the [...]
Three years ago I did some work for Debt on Your Doorstep - who fight against the UK business in extortionate rate loans for people of very limited means, most of which are offered over very short periods and are repaid in cash weekly.
At the time no one was sure precisely what rates were being [...]
I commented in somewhat similar fashion to the item noted below on ethics on AccountingWEB yesterday, and the following comment came back:
Values? What values? Is Richard implying there should be some sort of individual subjective test? If so I’d love to know how that gets articulated.
I’ve never met a client yet that didn’t feel good [...]
The United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs published its report entitled Tax Haven Abuses: The Enablers, The Tools and Secrecy on 1 August.
This is an important report. It will require a lot of analysis.
But I’ve got one, I admit, very personal reason to welcome it. The [...]
The Ethical Corporation has done an interesting review of Barclay’s 2005 CSR Report. In it they note that:
In the foreword to Barclays’ most recent CSR report, group chief executive John Varley writes that he was surprised when he heard that the banking sector is regarded by many as a bit of a laggard on corporate [...]
As the US seeks to close offshore abuse, another market opens.
Czech Business Weekly reports that as the number of wealthy in the Czech Republic rises:
“The Czech market is certainly waking up to new schemes and new avenues of investment. People realize that there are legal ways to pay less tax and earn more from investment [...]
