International
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October 08, 2024
Germany May Offer Tax Break For 'E-Fuel' Cars, Ministry Says
The German government will consider a motor vehicle tax exemption for cars running only on fuels manufactured with renewable energy, known as e-fuels-only vehicles, the German Ministry of Finance announced Tuesday.
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October 08, 2024
China Pushes Back On Turkish EV Tariffs, Targets EU Brandy
China said Tuesday that it is appealing to the World Trade Organization to halt Turkish tariffs on electric and hybrid vehicles made in the country, and it announced a temporary anti-dumping measure on European Union brandy that follows the bloc's own EV tariffs.
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October 08, 2024
Tire Seller Counts As Importer, Owes $2M Tax, 5th Circ. Says
A Houston truck sales company owes nearly $2 million in excise taxes because it qualifies as the importer of tires that it bought from a Chinese manufacturer, the Fifth Circuit ruled Tuesday in overturning the decision of a Texas federal judge.
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October 08, 2024
Loss Rule Carveouts Raise Challenges In Pillar 2, Official Says
An IRS official flagged administrability concerns Tuesday with potential safe harbors that would, in some cases, carve out an international minimum tax agreement from interacting with long-standing domestic rules aimed at preventing companies from using the same economic loss twice.
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October 08, 2024
Australia Makes Additional Changes To Tax Pro Conduct Code
After industry pushback, delays and further tweaks, Australia's minister for financial services signed into law Tuesday further amendments to the nation's tax professional code of conduct as part of the country's reaction to the PwC document leak scandal.
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October 08, 2024
Eversheds Recruits Tax Disputes Partner From RPC
Eversheds Sutherland announced it has added a regulatory and tax disputes partner to its London office from Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP.
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October 08, 2024
UK Gov't Should Impose Exit Tax, Economists Say
The U.K. should follow the example of Australia and Canada and enact a tax on business owners leaving the country, according to a report published Tuesday by a research group.
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October 08, 2024
EU Removes Antigua And Barbuda From Tax Blacklist
The Council of the European Union removed Antigua and Barbuda from its blacklist of noncooperation jurisdictions on global tax standards, the EU's Economic and Financial Affairs Council announced Tuesday.
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October 08, 2024
Gov't Urged To Commit To Pension Tax 'Lock' In Budget
The government must commit to a long-term pact on pension tax policy, experts said, warning that prolonged uncertainty is damaging consumer confidence.
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October 07, 2024
Justices Won't Hear Man's FBAR Constitutionality Challenge
The U.S. Supreme Court let stand Monday a Seventh Circuit decision dismissing a man's challenge to the constitutionality of the Bank Secrecy Act's requirement to report his foreign bank accounts, effectively ending the man's claim that the filings were an invasion of privacy.
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October 07, 2024
Jury Finds Professor Hid Foreign Bank Accounts
An 86-year-old former college professor faces more than $500,000 plus interest in penalties after a jury found that he had deliberately failed to report his foreign bank accounts in Switzerland and Turkey, according to documents filed in a California federal court.
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October 07, 2024
Man Who Faced Espionage Case Gets Probation Over Taxes
A Chinese engineer initially accused of illegally exporting documents on military aircraft to China was given probation and fined for failing to report about $1.4 million in business income by a Texas federal court after the government dropped its export charges.
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October 07, 2024
Singapore Seeks Comments On Min. Tax Safe Harbor Rules
Singapore is looking for feedback on proposed safe harbor and transition rules that would complement its coming implementation of the OECD's Pillar Two global minimum tax on large multinational corporations, its revenue authority said.
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October 07, 2024
Norway's Gov't Looking To Close Exit Tax Loophole
Norway's government said Monday that it is looking to close a loophole by adjusting its exit tax rules, though the tightening on when the tax must be paid would be paired with a 500% increase of the threshold for when the tax becomes applicable.
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October 07, 2024
Corp. Tactics May Call For Rethinking Tax Breaks, Paper Says
Countries may want to look at scaling back corporate tax breaks to address tax planning opportunities taken advantage of by businesses over the past 20 years while those tax breaks have proliferated, according to a working paper published Monday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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October 07, 2024
India Seeking Feedback On Income Tax Regime
India's government said Monday it is undergoing what it called a comprehensive review of its income tax regime in hopes of reducing litigation and increasing taxpayer certainty.
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October 07, 2024
TCJA Extension, Biz Tax Cut To Reward Top 5%, Report Says
Former President Donald Trump's planned extension of the 2017 tax cuts and lowering of corporate rates contribute most among his platform to lowering taxes for the wealthiest 5% and hiking them for everyone else, the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy said Monday in a report.
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October 05, 2024
Biz Owners Saved £1.3B On Inheritance Tax, Report Says
Business owners have saved their families an estimated £1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) last year by claiming business property relief on inheritance tax, according to law firm TWM Solicitors.
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October 04, 2024
DC Circ. Won't Reconsider Whistleblower's $690M Claim
The D.C. Circuit on Friday rejected a whistleblower's request that it rehear a ruling upholding the denial of up to $690 million, or 30%, of the $2.3 billion collected in an Internal Revenue Service offshore voluntary disclosure program.
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October 04, 2024
Promise Of OECD's Payments Tax Treaty Called Into Question
The OECD-designed tool to provide developing countries with better means to apply a minimum tax on income sent from their jurisdictions to low-taxed entities within a corporate group is inadequate to address those countries' revenue needs, tax policy organizations said.
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October 04, 2024
Australia Wants Feedback On Tax Promoter Penalty Regime
The Australian government asked Friday for feedback on the country's current tax promoter penalty regime as part of its efforts to strengthen its regulatory frameworks in the wake of the PwC document leak scandal.
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October 04, 2024
Europe Votes To Raise Tariffs On Electric Vehicles From China
European Union member states voted Friday to impose higher tariffs on imports of battery electric vehicles from China for the next five years, adding to the already staggering tariffs imposed by the United States and Canada.
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October 04, 2024
Brazil Establishes 15% Global Min. Tax On Large Cos.
Brazil's government has adopted the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 15% global corporate minimum tax on large multinational corporations making €750 million ($823 million) annually.
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October 04, 2024
Former NJ Doctor Owes $4.8M In FBAR Penalties, Court Told
A former physician in New Jersey faces a tax bill of almost $5 million for failing to report 19 bank accounts he opened at Indian banks, the government told a federal court.
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October 04, 2024
ECJ Says Interest Deduction Limits Align With EU Law
Governments across the European Union can legislate to block businesses from getting corporate tax deductions on interest paid as part of noncommercial loans, the European Court of Justice ruled Friday.
Expert Analysis
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Review Of Repatriation Tax Sets Justices On Slippery Slope
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision to review the constitutionality of the repatriation tax in Moore v. U.S. has implications for many tax rules involving unrealized amounts and could leave the court on the brink of invalidating large swaths of the Internal Revenue Code, say attorneys at Eversheds Sutherland.
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What To Make Of IRS' New Advance Pricing Guidance
Recent guidance on the IRS' goals for its advance pricing agreement system provides helpful insight into review and decision-making procedures for advance pricing agreement requests, but it also raises questions about the IRS' objectives, say Richard Slowinski and Stefanie Kavanagh at Alston & Bird.
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Reserved Investor Fund Would Plug Gap In UK Finance Market
The reserved investor fund recently proposed by HM Treasury has the potential to be a welcome tax-efficient addition to the U.K.’s canon of products for real estate investments, with attractive features for companies and, in particular, large asset managers, say lawyers at Herbert Smith.
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The Reciprocal Tax Bill Is A Warning Shot At Pillar 2
A bill recently introduced in the House of Representatives to reciprocally tax countries deemed to have imposed discriminatory taxes on U.S. citizens and businesses takes aim at countries implementing the global minimum tax treaty known as Pillar Two, with which the U.S. has not complied, says Alan Cole at the Tax Foundation.
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What Tax-Exempt Orgs. Need From Energy Credit Guidance
Guidance clarifying the Inflation Reduction Act’s credit regime, expected from the U.S. Department of the Treasury this summer, should help tax-exempt organizations determine the benefits of clean energy projects and integrate alternative energy investments into their activities, say attorneys at Morgan Lewis.
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How Foreign Info Return Penalty Case May Benefit Taxpayers
The U.S. Tax Court's recent decision that the Internal Revenue Service cannot penalize taxpayers for failing to file foreign corporation information returns may give similarly situated taxpayers an opportunity to also avoid penalties, provided they protect their rights before the decision is overturned or mooted by legislation, say attorneys at Arnold & Porter.
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The Nuts And Bolts Of IRS Domestic Content Tax Credit
Recent IRS guidance provides specifics on how renewable energy projects can qualify for bonus tax credits by meeting U.S. domestic content rules, but also creates a qualification framework that will be complicated for project developers to navigate, say Scott Cockerham and Wolfram Pohl at Orrick.
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Taxing The Digital Economy: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
U.S. tech companies should watch for important developments in international taxation, including the resolution of Apple's decade-old state aid case, growing frustration with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's global tax plan and adoption of the digital services tax instead, says Joyce Beebe at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
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Big Tax Changes For Multinational Cos. In Budget Proposal
The Biden administration’s fiscal year 2024 budget proposes changes that would materially alter decades-old Internal Revenue Code provisions, requiring a shift in multinational corporations' tax planning strategies comparable to that required after enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, say Xenia Garofalo and Kyle Colonna at Eversheds Sutherland.
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Senate Credit Suisse Report Puts Attention On Banks, Trusts
The Senate Finance Committee's recent finding that Credit Suisse violated a plea agreement struck over its role in enabling offshore tax evasion has important ramifications for banks and trusts, including how they onboard, document and report on transactions relevant to U.S. reporting requirements, say Will Barry and Ian Herbert at Miller & Chevalier.
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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.
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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.
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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.