Take this story from Forbes, for example. As they put it: Why pay tax if you don’t have to? Thomas Siebel used a corporate beast with the colorful name “horizontal double dummy” to avoid a big tax hit when he sold his Siebel Systems to Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL – news – people ) this year.
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What were Ernst & Young thinking of when they created this? What are we meant to think of Ernst & Young? Thanks to Dennis Howlett for the link Technorati : accountancy, ernst & young

I’ve written a bit about sham trusts on here of late. It’s good to have the evidence therefore that they really do impose a cost on society. The US Senate report provides some examples. But there are more. Take another example from the US, reported in the Amarillo Globe News. A 68 year old local
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The EU held a seminar entitled ‘Corporate tax competition and coordination in the European Union‘ on 25 September and it was my misfortune to attend. The seminar featured papers from Europe’s leading tax economists, but left me with the question I asked of them publicly during the day, which was “so what?” The reason for
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I was reminded by an email from Jeffrey Owens (head of tax at the OECD) that I have not given sufficient (in fact, any) coverage to what happened at the recent meeting of the OECD’s Forum on Tax Administration in Seoul. The communique from the meeting said (amongst other things): Our discussions in Seoul confirmed
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As ever, accountants are seeking to exploit any loophole they can find in taxation law and regulations. One of the more recent wheezes is to invest offshore in accounts compliant with Islamic Sharia law. Under this law interest cannot be paid, but its not uncommon for bankers to now offer ‘profit sharing’ opportunities to Islamic
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The Tax Justice Network in Jersey visited France at the weekend. One of the people they met was a bank manager with a large French bank. He told them: “We are very vigilant about money laundering‚Ķ we don’t accept any monies coming from the Channel Islands.” Enough said, I think (and thanks to Chris Steel
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The Independent on Sunday covered the Carl Levin US Senate report today. The comment given to them by the UK Treasury is the most telling part of the report. What’s astonishing is that the UK government persists with the myth that it is tackling tax abuse simply by dealing with it at the personal and
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Dennis Howlett has been musing on developments in the market for the Big 4 as pressure is brought to bear upon them. What he says is worth reading. So I won’t repeat it.