Israel’s legislators and its tax authority currently have enough on their plates handling the war economy to justify some light-headedness when it comes to answering the demands of an ill-timed audit by the tax-wallahs of the OECD. That august organization is now threatening Israel (who isn’t?) with the naughty step. The misdemeanour – our system…
Ever since, on October 16, 1962, President John F Kennedy took time out from the Cuban Missile Crisis to sign the world's first Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC) legislation into law, it has been becoming harder and harder for residents of the planet to park their savings tax free within companies in foreign jurisdictions. Israel has…
It has been suggested that substantially all British humour of the last half century, from Monty Python onwards, derives from BBC Radio’s Goon Show, the madcap 1950s antics of Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe. Perhaps the most iconic moment in the ‘Last Good Show Of All’ (no prize for guessing where that came…
If Economics is an inexact science, Transfer Pricing is alchemy. A recent court case involving the sale of describe-them-anyway-you-like intangibles by an Israeli company to its US multinational parent was a cautionary tale to anybody thinking of selling or gifting an asset to a foreign relative – be it a son, niece, Elon Musk, or…
"For our last number, I'd like to ask your help. The people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry." John Lennon's immortal words at London's Royal Variety Performance in November 1963 reflected the weltanschauung of the time - Britain was careering towards a General…
If I had to admit to my biggest professional failure over a long career, it would be ‘telling it like it is’. Not for me the, ‘Oh my God! I don’t believe you did that, and if you don’t use my very expensive services, you may be heading for prison,’ when the true risk of…
Bach’s Double Violin Concerto was once played as a conversation between husband and wife, by two virtuosi, at a memorial service in Westminster Abbey for the late spouse of a prominent politician. A Tel Aviv Labor Court decision earlier this month suggested grounds for a similar musical parley between the National Insurance Institute and the…
Once upon a time, children’s behavior was kept in check by Cautionary Tales. Something was prohibited, someone (traditionally a naughty kid) did what they were forbidden to do, and someone (the same kid) came to a sticky end. Young bedtime readers’ inclination to err was doused by bed wetting and anguished screams in the night.…
When I studied economics around the time Americans elected their first septuagenarian president, everything was made to look simple. After decades of the complex world according to John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman dug up an old equation of Irving Fisher, and Monetarism and its Rational Expectations offshoot were launched at the inflation-tired leaders of the…
In A.S. Byatt’s 2009 masterpiece ‘The Children’s Book’, the reader has one horrible advantage over the predominantly young characters in the novel. As they gradually grow and mature through the closing years of the 19th century and the Edwardian decade that followed, the carefree youngsters are surrounded by art and privilege, several poignantly attending the…
Tax Break 