This week Jersey has tried to be all thing to all people. First it tells the US Senate how compliant its finance industry. Then it bangs it’s drum about winning the ‘Offshore Finance Centre of the Year Award’. Look at this stuff from the associated press release:
In winning the prestigious award, Jersey beat off competition [...]
Accountancy Age report that UK accountants PKF have seen evidence that the banks who have made disclosure of offshore bank accounts held by UK resident individuals have also made disclsoure of UK based offshore trusts and companies.
It has been believed until now that the orders issued against the banks excluded this information. However, since money [...]
A corespondent sent me the following. I could have edited it, but I wont. It seems a fair summary:
Now that the northern Irish have got their devolved assembly up-and-running again it would seem that noises are being made to bring about some fiscal alignment with the Republic. This sounds to me very much like the [...]
Finfacts, one of the best sources of what is going on in Ireland, has reported:
Cruickshank, Ireland’s leading firm of patent and intellectual property attorneys, has warned the Irish Government that unless it urgently revisits its recent changes to patent tax laws, Ireland could be turned into a corporate tax haven, without creating any local value. [...]
It looks like Microsoft’s love affair with Ireland is fleeting. According to the Irish Independent (behind a registration wall) in the past two years Microsoft’s Irish subsidiary has paid dividends totalling €5bn to its Seattle-based parent. That’s despite making profits less than that at €2bn pre tax a year. The tax charge is running at [...]
The European Commission issued a press release on Friday. I’m usually reluctant to reproduce big chunks of press releases but this one is important:
By a reasoned opinion under Article 226 of the EC Treaty, the European Commission has formally requested Ireland to amend its legislation concerning remittance base taxation. Ireland normally does not tax income [...]
You can’t build an economy on tax breaks. Ireland proves it. Look at this for an example of paranoia about how vulnerable they are to tax, written by Declan O’Neill, Partner, Corporate Tax Services partner in Ernst & Young Dublin, commenting on their 2007 Budget:
While some of the changes announced in the Finance Bill will [...]
I was amused to find there were 25 visits to this blog from the Isle of Man Government yesterday. I can’t imagine why this happened :-), but you’re all very welcome!
If you’d like to talk, please feel free to call.
The Irish Times reported yesterday that the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) had insisted in the Dáil (Parliament) that:
Ireland is not being used as a Cayman Islands-style tax paradise by rich businessmen
He did so in response to claims by Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins who said:
corporation tax rates in the country were “utterly immoral”.
Both are right of [...]
I was in action in the Irish press as well as that of the UK this last weekend. The Sunday Tribune ran a major feature on growing worldwide concerns about Ireland’s behaviour as a tax haven.
Two things struck me about this report. The first is the persistence of the Irish government in denying this glaringly [...]
