A hundred years after the countries of Europe drew their battle lines in France and promptly got stuck in the mud, the Paris-based OECD looks like it is facing a long period of trench warfare. Originally predicted to be half-finished by Christmas, the BEPS plan - if it is to be instituted at all - will almost…
The Tax Business
If proof were needed that the Silly Season is upon us, it turned up in our mail box a few days ago. Slowly ripping open the envelope housing last week's Economist, I noticed an 'x' peeping out at me from the partially-revealed cover. Excited by the prospect of 'tax' finally having hit the headlines of the world's…
Nowhere to hide
Tax Break has just had its longest break since its inception in 2011 due to the difficult period Israel has been going through. The post below is more sober than usual (in fact, for some people, it might be downright depressing). Please do not adjust your computers - normal service will be resumed as soon…
The Balls In Her Court?
What with the World Cup and Wimbledon, the last few weeks have been jam-packed with balls - an appropriate time, perhaps, for the British Labour Party to present its ideas for the future of tax policy should it win the next General Election. But more of that later. I grew up thinking the Queen was so…
Taking the mojo out of inversions
By now, everybody has heard of the aborted takeover of British pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca by US giant, Pfizer. The latest in a series of US corporate inversions, the new corporate structure was to be headed by the smaller UK company, thus largely spiriting the merged group beyond the lascivious tentacles of the US Internal Revenue Service. Fascinated by…
Foul!
"I fail to understand why any of you would be interested in twenty-two illiterate young men kicking an inflated pig's bladder around an oblong of grass." A bible-bashing preacher doing the rounds of Lancashire's pubs in late-Victorian England? Not quite. Actually, the headmaster of my school (see previous post) in mid- 1973 berating a hodgepodge of gormless…
Down Wiv Skool
I was chatting the other night with my middle son when he came out with the word "procrastinate". He also knew what it meant - not bad for a young man neither born nor bred in an English-speaking country. While 'procrastinate' is not as complicated as 'antidisestablishmentarianism,' the word does have as many syllables as that old spelling bee…
Deading The Fat Man
Moral Dilemma - two words that do not feature prominently , jointly or severally, in the tax advisor's lexicon. In the first half of the 20th Century when world wars were all the rage, moral dilemmas evolved from the gritty reality of combat. By the late sixties serious debate was banished to the periphery of existence…
Go ahead punk, make my day
"This tape will self-destruct in five seconds." In the 1960s, while the mission may have been impossible, information protection was very possible. Burned, swallowed or - until a bunch of bored students were looking for something to do at the US Embassy in Teheran - shredded, there was no difficulty eradicating the evidence from the face of the earth.…
Tracking tax avoidance
" U.S. Lawmakers Slam Caterpillar Over Tax Avoidance". That headline last month in one of our drab but professional trade mags brought a sardonic smile to my face as I imagined a black-windowed Hummer careering around Capitol Hill jam-packed with Senators. At the vehicle's wheel was Carl Levin who suddenly screamed "Ya-hoo" ,or whatever 80-year-old Americans from Michigan scream when…
Tax Break 