European Union officials have proposed removing eight jurisdictions from the blacklist of tax havens the bloc adopted in December, in what critics may see as a blow to its campaign against tax avoidance. EU states decided last month to draw up the list in a bid to discourage the most aggressive tax dodging practices.
Google saved itself as much as $3.7 billion in 2016 by moving 16 billion euros between Ireland, the Netherlands, and Bermuda using infamous legal loopholes that allow it to skirt high tax responsibilities overseas, according to a report from Bloomberg. Citing regulatory filings in the Netherlands, Google uses two structures, known as a "Double Irish" and a "Dutch Sandwich," to shield the majority of its international profits from taxation. The setup involves shifting revenue from one Irish subsidiary to a Dutch company with no employees, and then on to a Bermuda mailbox owned by another Ireland-registered company.
Caterpillar has long used a subsidiary in Geneva, Switzerland, called Caterpillar SARL, to process sales and profits for international orders, and the IRS wants the heavy-machinery maker to pay a $2 billion tax bill on that business, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Journal story goes onto say that, although the company maintains that its Swiss strategy, which results in an effective tax rate there of as low as 4%, is legal, some Caterpillar employees have questioned the practice, which began in 1999.
The consumer protection organization in Switzerland, SKS filed a claim for nearly 6,000 Volkswagen car owners seeking damages from the carmaker and AMAG the Swiss car dealer, for the emissions scandal. The claim was handed over to the Zurich commercial court.
SKS said it was assuming damages amounted on average to 15 per cent of the initial retail price of the vehicles concerned and that, together with insurance companies supporting the legal action, it wanted to give Swiss-based car owners the possibility to enforce their rights without disproportionate financial risk.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) introduced the Value Added Tax (VAT) for the first time from Monday.
It is a five per cent tax on most goods and services to boost revenue. The VAT will be applied on food, clothes, electronics and gasoline, phone, water and electricity bills, as well as hotel reservations, the BBC reported. The five percent sales tax applies to most goods and services and analysts project that the two governments could raise as much as $21 billion in 2018, equivalent to 2.0 percent of GDP.
Switzerland’s value-added tax regime will change from January 1, 2018, including to level the playing field for domestic companies compared with their online, overseas rivals.
Currently, foreign companies providing services in Switzerland do not have to pay VAT on Swiss turnover up to a CHF100,000 threshold. In this way, it led to competitive disadvantages for Swiss businesses, especially in the border regions.
Nine lawsuits have been filed against United States multinational technology company Apple for fraud, after the company said it slowed down older iPhones to compensate for poor battery performance, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
Eight of the nine lawsuits have been filed in the US District Courts in California, New York and Illinois. They seek class action against Apple to represent potentially crores of iPhone users around the United States. A similar case was lodged in an Israeli court on Monday, the newspaper Haaretz reported. Apple did not respond to an email seeking comment on the filings.
India and Switzerland have signed a deal that would allow both to automatically share tax-related data from 2019. The Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) will be implemented on January 1, 2018; the first year will involve collection of data in accordance with global standards.
