In my halcyon days as a tax adviser, a client conference meant lots of numbers thrown at a stark white screen via an overhead projector, the small audience looking pale and bored under the harsh fluorescent lighting. We, the professionals, were geeks that nobody wanted to talk to unless we were saving their cash, or…
Embrace the Model Treaty
When wheelchair bound 'Ironside' star Raymond Burr walked confidently down the aircraft steps at Lod Airport in 1974, the reaction of the Israeli public was something akin to the second coming. Still caught in the long shadow of the Yom Kippur War, Israelis were far closer to Tom Brokaw's 'Greatest Generation' than consumerist 1970s Western…
GILTI until proven simple
Appearing on Johnny Carson's Tonight show in 1975, the ex-governor of California quipped: 'We live in the only country in the world where it takes more brains to figure out your income tax than it does to earn the income.' A little over a decade later, the same gentleman put his pen where his mouth…
Watch this space
The proud boast of the John Lewis Partnership Department Store chain, 'Never knowingly undersold since 1925', is less than impressive when compared with Switzerland's record on international tax. It has never been knowlingly undersold since at least 1872 when one of its cantons signed the world's first every double taxation treaty. I thought of Switzerland when…
Tax Break 