International
-
May 24, 2024
UK Calls On Belarus To Undo Suspension Of Tax Agreement
The U.K. is demanding that Belarus reverse a council resolution that suspends provisions of the double-taxation agreement between the two countries starting June 1, according to a statement released by HM Revenue & Customs.
-
May 24, 2024
IRS Corrects Notice On Bonus Energy Tax Credit Safe Harbors
The Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a correction Friday to a notice providing additional safe harbors that clean energy project developers can use to qualify for bonus tax credits for domestically sourcing their steel and aluminum parts.
-
May 24, 2024
€14M VAT Fraud Scheme In Belgium, Netherlands Busted
Seven people were arrested in the Netherlands in connection to a value-added tax fraud scheme involving the Belgian subsidiary of a Dutch company fraudulently claiming a €13.7 million ($14.9 million) refund on trades of goods that never happened, the European Public Prosecutor's Office said Friday.
-
May 24, 2024
EU Withholding Tax Deal Lacks Ambition, Investors Say
A recently agreed-to streamlining of how cross-border withholding taxes are refunded in the European Union lacks ambition and may not do much to help smaller investors, investor advocates said.
-
May 24, 2024
Taxation With Representation: Davis Polk, Wachtell, Latham
In this week's Taxation With Representation, SouthState Corp. buys Independent Bank Group Inc., CyberArk acquires Venafi, Carlyle clinches its fifth Japanese buyout fund, and AuditBoard Inc. agrees to be bought by Hg Capital.
-
May 24, 2024
Cyprus, Portugal Aim For National Implementation Of Pillar 2
Cyprus and Portugal both said Friday that they are moving toward putting the minimum tax known as Pillar Two into their national legislation, which EU law requires them to have done by the end of 2023.
-
May 23, 2024
Premier League Team Goes Down 2-Nil In VAT Bill Appeal
Premier League soccer team Nottingham Forest must pay its more than £345,000 ($438,000) value-added tax bill, the U.K.'s Upper Tribunal ruled in a decision published Thursday, dismissing an appeal of a lower court ruling that found HM Revenue & Customs filed its tax assessment on time.
-
May 23, 2024
Italy Adopts Safe Harbor Global Minimum Tax Rules
Italy has added a temporary safe harbor provision to its implementation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's global minimum tax to ease the transition for in-scope companies, the country's finance ministry said.
-
May 23, 2024
White & Case Adds Former A&O Tax Pro In Luxembourg
White & Case LLP announced it has added a tax partner to its Luxembourg office from A&O Shearman who specializes in international and Luxembourg corporate tax law.
-
May 23, 2024
Carbon Pricing Generated Over $100B In 2023, Report Says
Carbon pricing mechanisms worldwide generated a record $104 billion in revenue in 2023, according to a World Bank report, though it said the 75 instruments currently in force are too few and doing too little.
-
May 23, 2024
Spain, Greece, Sweden Have Tax Policy Problems, EU Says
The European Union's executive arm called on Spain, Greece and Sweden on Thursday to change tax laws the bloc finds problematic, while also referring a Spanish tax issue to the European Court of Justice.
-
May 23, 2024
EU Flags Nations For Shortcomings On Pillar 2, Exchange Law
The European Commission said Thursday that six European Union countries still have failed to implement the global minimum tax for large companies, and it noted that an additional three aren't properly implementing an information exchange law.
-
May 23, 2024
Yellen Opposes Global Redistribution Of Billionaires' Wealth
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen repeated Thursday that she opposes a global minimum tax on billionaires and added that she does not support basing a redistribution of the revenue from such a tax on damage from climate change and related financing needs.
-
May 23, 2024
G7 Should Agree On Frozen Russian Assets, Yellen Says
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday that the Group of Seven countries should agree now on a concept of how the capital of frozen and immobilized Russian state assets should be used to support Ukraine's war against Russia.
-
May 23, 2024
EU Could Add Sectors To Border Tax, Commissioner Says
The European Union should consider expanding its carbon border tax beyond the initial sectors covered, an EU commissioner has said.
-
May 23, 2024
Akerman Brings On Kilpatrick Tax Ace In LA
Akerman LLP is boosting its tax team, bringing in a Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP corporate tax and energy tax credit expert as a partner in its Los Angeles office.
-
May 22, 2024
Justices' CFPB Alliance May Save SEC Courts, Not Chevron
A four-justice concurrence to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision upholding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's unique funding scheme last week carries implications for other cases pending before the court that challenge the so-called administrative state, or the permanent cadre of regulatory agencies and career government enforcers who hold sway over vast swaths of American economic life.
-
May 22, 2024
German Legislature Moves To Update Certain Tax Treaties
The lower house of Germany's legislature has approved a bill to update multiple bilateral tax treaties as part of the country's implementation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's project against base erosion and profit shifting.
-
May 22, 2024
Doctor Must Stay In Jail In Tax Penalty Fight, Gov't Says
A doctor incarcerated for civil contempt for not paying $1.1 million in penalties for failing to report his foreign accounts should remain in jail until he has done more to comply, the U.S. government told a Michigan federal court Wednesday.
-
May 22, 2024
Belgium Provides Pillar 2 Reporting Rules
Belgium's finance ministry has issued guidance on what large multinational entities and domestic groups will need to do to comply with the country's coming registration requirement as part of its implementation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's global corporate minimum tax.
-
May 22, 2024
Guernsey Joins Crown Dependencies Moving Toward Pillar 2
Guernsey will soon take steps to implement the OECD's 15% global minimum tax on large multinational corporations making €750 million ($813 million) annually, in line with fellow U.K. crown dependencies the Isle of Man and Jersey, the island's Finance Ministry said.
-
May 22, 2024
Property Transfer For Tax Break Not Dishonest, UK Court Says
Two liquidated London real estate companies failed to convince the United Kingdom Court of Appeal that their former director behaved dishonestly by transferring their holdings to Jersey trusts for less than market value to obtain a tax advantage, according to a judgment released Wednesday.
-
May 22, 2024
IRS Again Delays Reporting Rules for Certain BEAT Payments
The Internal Revenue Service is deferring until 2027 the applicability date of requirements for reporting certain intercompany payments that are exempt from the base erosion and anti-abuse tax, the agency announced Wednesday.
-
May 22, 2024
IRS Again Delaying Dividend Anti-Abuse Regs
The Internal Revenue Service is again extending the transition period for rules that govern certain financial transactions that could avoid withholding on dividend payments to foreign taxpayers, it announced Wednesday.
-
May 22, 2024
UK Gov't Calls Elections For July 4 Despite Poor Polls
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday called an early general election to be held on July 4, advancing the electoral timetable even though his Conservative Party lags decisively behind the opposition Labour Party.
Expert Analysis
-
Seeking IRS Accountability For Faulty Microcaptive Notice
Like the taxpayers in Standard Insurances v. U.S. seeking to expand earlier wins in microcaptive insurance cases that limit IRS use of improperly obtained information, others should consider ways to hold the agency accountable and provide incentive for it to follow the law going forward, says Joshua Smeltzer at Gray Reed.
-
Biden Admin. Proposals Both Encourage And Thwart EV Adoption
While the Biden administration has been aggressively focused on promoting electric vehicles from the start, its recently issued guidance on EV tax credits and its restrictive new auto emissions proposal create a sense of implementation whiplash that may frustrate manufacturers and consumers, says Levi McAllister at Morgan Lewis.
-
The Key Issues Keeping Transfer Pricing A Top Tax Concern
Several challenges preventing a global economic reemergence from the pandemic era are making practitioners reevaluate commonly used transfer pricing models, and embrace new technologies and ways of doing business, say Farnaz Amini and Sophia Castro Jurado at Marcum.
-
Curtailing Offshore Tax-Advantaged Investment In China
The U.S. government's plans to establish a new outbound investment regime hold the potential to arrest Chinese companies' increasing use of offshore, tax-advantaged locations to raise capital, says David Plotinsky at Morgan Lewis.
-
Cos. May Want To Wait Out US-EU Green Incentives Fight
As the European Union considers measures to compete with the Inflation Reduction Act's incentives for U.S. production of clean tech, and EU and U.S. officials discuss a possible compromise, companies in the green sector should consider taking a wait-and-see approach to investment decisions, says Todd Thacker at Goldberg Segalla.
-
India's Budget Proposals May Ease Entry For Certain Sectors
India’s recently released budget includes proposals to facilitate doing business in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City and moderate thousands of compliance requirements, opening up new opportunities for foreign businesses in the digital infrastructure, manufacturing and renewable energy sectors, say Mukesh Butani and Seema Kejriwal at BMR Legal.
-
High Court Ax Of Atty-Client Privilege Case Deepens Split
The U.S. Supreme Court's recent dismissal of In re: Grand Jury as improvidently granted maintains a three-way circuit split on the application of attorney-client privilege to multipurpose communications, although the justices have at least shown a desire to address it, say Trey Bourn and Thomas DiStanislao at Butler Snow.
-
US-India Advance Pricing Resolutions Should Reassure Cos.
The United States' and India's tax authorities' recent resolution of a significant number of pending advance pricing agreements should reduce taxpayer uncertainty, reassure companies of the nations' good working relationship and improve India's investment environment, say Miller Williams and Caroline Setliffe at Eversheds Sutherland.
-
Stock Buyback Excise Tax Guidance A Mixed Bag For SPACs
Recent IRS guidance on the new stock repurchase excise tax includes a welcome exception for publicly traded special-purpose acquisition companies but does not exclude redemptions in connection with a de-SPAC transaction, and further guidance is needed to clarify ambiguities around the exception's application, say Olga Bogush and Evgeny Magidenko at ArentFox Schiff.
-
The IRS' APA Rulemaking Journey: There And Back Again
Attorneys at Dentons examine recent challenges in which taxpayers successfully argued Internal Revenue Service rulemaking was invalid under the Administrative Procedure Act, how tax exceptionalism and U.S. Supreme Court regulatory deference prompted such challenges, and similar challenges the agency will likely face following this line of cases.
-
ECJ Fiat Ruling Sets Clear Boundaries For EU State Aid Law
The European Court of Justice's recent landmark decision in Fiat v. Commission limiting the commission’s attempts to circumvent the lack of EU powers in the area of tax law has important implications in EU state aid law and beyond, say Andreas Reindl and Pietro Stella at Van Bael.
-
Unpacking The Interim Guidance On New Stock Buyback Tax
The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service's recent notice on applying the newly effective excise tax on stock repurchases provides much-needed clarity on the tax's scope, which is much broader than anticipated given its underlying policy rationale, say attorneys at Eversheds Sutherland.
-
IRS Will Use New Resources To Increase Scrutiny In 2023
The new year promises to be a busy one for the Internal Revenue Service, which is poised to apply the boost in funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act to bolster and expand its enforcement capability, and there are four areas to watch, say attorneys at Skadden.