The first to hit the catwalk at the Miss World Tax beauty contest that spanned year-end was Lady Justice New Zealand with a December 12 landmark tax avoidance decision. Following close on her high-tax heels on December 19 was Lady Justice Canada with an insight into the application of the General Anti-Avoidance Rule and only a day later Lady Justice…
L’entente cordiale?
De Gaulle once told Churchill's wife Clementine, "France has no friends, only interests". This could have been the motto for his great creation, the Fifth Republic or - for that matter - the Fourth, Third, Second or First. Nicolas Sarkozy is at it again. Spurred on by the threat of his presidency being guillotined at the French elections…
For tax advisor and country
There is a framed football shirt hanging on my son's wall. It is half blue, half white - the blue half sporting the insignia of the Israel Football Association and the white half the Three Lions of England. Scrawled in indelible marker across the English half is the inscription "Good Luck, Bobby Charlton" ( for the benefit…
Lies, damned lies and tax rates
Romney 25%! Gingrich 12.5%! Santorum 17.5%! Perry 20%! Remember the old Fair Ground game where you had to guess the number of candies in a jar? If you got the nearest number you won a massive, totally inflammable, furry toy that Mum and Dad refused to take home in the car but relented when they couldn't find a big…
To tax or not to tax…..
Forced to summarize Israel's international tax legislation in half a sentence, I could not better Shakespeare's all time bogeyman - Richard III: "Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time/ Into this breathing world, scarce half made up". Tax legislation in the first half-century following Israel's independence adopted, what might now be termed, the "Mitt Romney Approach" - …
Dead loss
Liu Zhuiheng was executed last Thursday. Xinhua, the Chinese State News Agency, reported that the 52 year old from Hunan Province had been convicted of the July 2010 bombing of his local tax office resulting in 4 dead and 17 wounded. The motive for the crime was frustration over his business losses. Now, if we…
Tax Break 