Tax Break

04 Feb 2019

Watch this space

The Rolls Royce (alright, Bentley) of tax havens

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 enquiring about a new car last week. As the model that interests me is sold in two local showrooms, I tried both. One was highly professional and even told me the ‘real’ statistics for fuel consumption, as well as which model would best suit my needs. The other went through the usual car salesman’s pitch and, before signing off, blatantly declared they would undercut anything the other guys were offering. The search goes on.

Anything you need..

Throughout my career, Switzerland has been enormously useful. Holding companies, domicile companies, principal companies, mixed companies and finance branches have provided solutions for international groups looking to park some of their profits offshore without the need for sailing out to some God-forsaken island in the Atlantic of Pacific where, once upon a time, the local representative might have been cooked for lunch. However, as international competition for corporate tax tourism picked up in recent decades, the Swiss had to up their game. There were even international visits from respectable firms of Swiss tax advisors offering private rulings involving somersaults of tax logic. Nothing particularly strange about that. It was the fact that they were accompanied by representatives of their local cantons’ tax authorities, smiling benignly.

And then came the world’s Damascene Conversion to fairness and transparency in the international tax sphere. For Switzerland it was more a case of the Spanish Inquisition. With nowhere to turn, where would they would they go from here?

Well, the response has been sometime in coming, and thanks to 50,000 troublemakers forcing a referendum on the issue a couple of weeks back, it will still be coming until at least May. But, the proposal approved by the legislature late last year does away with all those different types of special company and says goodbye to private tax rulings. In their place come ‘reduced’ combined federal and cantonal tax rates centred around 13% to 14% and a string of other provisions.

It is the string of other provisions that has left me checking the internet for booby-trapped timing devices. Switzerland just has to stay ahead of the pack. Call it Swiss DNA. In the modern world 13% to 14% just ain’t going to swing it. (They couldn’t go any lower – as a nation that doesn’t sport beaches and not much else, they do have to worry about funding their welfare schemes. As it is, employee/employer taxes have had to be upped to cover the loss of corporate revenue). There is provision for step-up of assets for companies migrating to Switzerland (some nice planning available there) and the write-off of hidden reserves for companies coming out of the old regimes. But, the latter only lasts five years and Switzerland presumably hopes to live a bit longer than that. Notional Interest Deductions on capital are thought to only apply to one canton. Beyond that, patent box and R&D treatment are pretty standard.

quote-in-italy-for-thirty-years-under-the-borgias-they-had-warfare-terror-murder-and-bloodshed-they-orson-welles-277430 So what are they going to do long-term? Switzerland, of course, is not just a pretty rock-face. Three of the largest fifty companies in the world are headquartered there (and I don’t just mean tax headquartered). The tourist industry is massive. And there is, of course, its impressive watch industry. However, 75% of the economy comes from services. Banking secrecy has been permanently compromised, and tax tourism seems to be following suit.

The Gnomes of Zürich must have something under their hats, surely? If there is one thing the Swiss are not, it is cuckoo.

27 Jan 2019

2 Comments

Keep Calm and Carry On

About as intellectual as it got

The British have always been a supremely pragmatic people. It was thanks to a fickle king that they knocked religious hegemony on the head early on, and thanks to another misguided monarch that they got their revolution out of the way before the Rousseaus, Marxes and Engels of the world could fill the vacuum with an ideology. Indeed, it was the utterly pragmatic empiricist John Locke who tidied up the mess in the latter half of the seventeenth century.

It is, therefore, no surprise that – despite the cataclysmic events in Parliament surrounding Brexit – the British Government has been beavering away, preparing for the morning after (which, because Brexit is planned for the night of Friday March 29th, will be effectively Monday April Fools Day).

The big news from Davos last week was that Britain and Israel have confirmed ‘in principle’ a Free Trade Agreement similar to that enjoyed between the EU and Israel. With £10 billion of trade, that is eminently sensible for both parties. What received less coverage was the signing a few days earlier of a protocol to the double taxation agreement between the two countries that dates back to 1962.

Protocols amend treaties. Hearing the words ‘protocol’, ‘tax’, ‘treaty’, ‘Israel’, ‘UK ” (not strictly a word) in the same sentence came as no surprise to my tax-attuned ear. What with all the OECD changes in respect of Base Earnings and Profit Shifting (BEPS) and the automatic exchange of information, protocols are the name of the day. The media reports (that all appeared to stem from the same press release) gave a few details of new provisions and mentioned the obvious. It was only when I downloaded and read the document (who, for heaven’s sake, ruins the party by reading primary sources these days?), that I realized the enormity of what had happened. Perfidious Albion, God bless her!

What an interesting job

Israel and the UK initialed a new treaty to replace the 1962 one way back in 2009. I remember it well, because I was informally consulted just before initialling, and found a couple of boo-boos. In order for a treaty to take effect, each country needs to take it through whatever processes its domestic law requires – but the stages are identical: initialling, signing, ratifying. In the UK, following the signing, an Order in Council is issued. That is a process where a Government representative rattles off the wording of a load of boring regulations while the Queen listens (yeh, sure!) and, in the case of a tax treaty or protocol, it goes to a delegated legislation committee, where it is considered and then brought before Parliament. It can then be ratified.

The 2009 treaty hit a total snafu after initialling. The original 1962 treaty bore the wording: ‘the term “Israel” means the territory in which the Government of Israel
levy (sic) taxation’, and ‘the terms “resident of the United Kingdom” and “resident of Israel” mean respectively any person who is resident in the United Kingdom for the
purposes of United Kingdom tax and any person who is resident in Israel for
the purposes of Israel tax’. It was widely understood that somebody in London (I hazard a guess, from the Foreign Office) decided that Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria aka the West Bank aka the Occupied Territories should not be included. That was never going to pass muster with the Israeli Government, and both sides got back in their trenches for the next decade.

But, times change, and these days it might be cheekily argued that go-it-alone Britain needs Israel more than Israel needs Britain (although Britain is still a very-nice-to-have). And that treaty is seriously prehistoric. Meanwhile, as Professor Emeritus of Empire Building, Britain had to watch its step.

Then came the Eureka! moment. It was time to sign protocols with treaty partners. A month after the UK’s High Commissioner in Cyprus signed with the Cypriots, a British government representative signed with the Israelis. But, there was a subtle difference. The Cypriot protocol ran to a familiar 3 pages; the Israeli protocol ran to an eye-boggling 19. The British and Israelis had effectively shoehorned the long-dormant new treaty into the Protocol, simply passing over the naughty bits.

I wonder if Mel is one of George’s

The signatory for the British Government was one Mel Stride, Paymaster-General – a name and title which, together with the plot, could have come straight out of a John Le Carre novel.

All that now remains is for the Queen to cock a deaf’un, and for Parliament to be pre-occupied with Brexit. (Israel also needs to ratify).

As regards the new provisions, they can be easily found popping up all over the internet in the same form as they were initially announced. What seems to have escaped the journalists’ attention is the long-awaited exemption on UK pensions received by Israeli residents (as opposed to the highly-specific exemption from withholding tax on interest and dividends to Israeli pension funds, which was included). New and potential expats, benefiting from a ten year tax exemption on foreign sourced income in Israel, should be talking to their advisors.

Posted in Britain, Israel and tagged Brexit, British Tax, International Tax, Israel tax, John Fisher, Tax Treaty

20 Jan 2019

It could have been 1984

1960s subliminal brainwashing led a generation to careers in numbers

A career in tax really does necessitate a command of numbers. You never know when they are going to unexpectedly turn up and try to bend your mind.

Many years ago, I was asked if I could assist an independent contractor with a spot of number bother with the Israeli tax authorities. I couldn’t.

An Israeli company contracted with a US individual for – what can best be described as – seasonal work. For a number of years, he had arrived on January 1st and left religiously on July 1st. In those days there were no low-cost airlines encouraging bookings decades in advance, so why was he so particular about the dates? To be back home in time for the July 4th jamboree? No. You guessed it. According to the Israel-US double taxation treaty, independent services by a US resident are only liable to tax in Israel if the individual is present for 183 days or more. As Israel has always contended that part of a day is to be considered as a day, he had to leave on July 1st – day 182. Since the paying company was required to apply for a withholding tax exemption certificate each year, the matter irritated the tax official charged with issuing the certificates to distraction.

Not that seasonal

There was nothing the frustrated official could do, so he waited patiently. And his patience paid off. Sometime towards the end of 1999 the individual booked his tickets as usual for January 1st to July 1st 2000. He may even have brilliantly thought he knew what he was doing, but – like over-clever crooks who are eventually hoisted with their own petard – he screwed it up. Even though it divides by 4, the turn of a century does not normally sport February 29th UNLESS the number of turns of the century since that event in Bethlehem two millennia ago also divides by 4. 2000 was a leap year, July 1st was day 183, and he was sunk.

This story came to mind now, because January is the month for getting caught napping by the Israeli tax system.

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One way to remember January 30th

Individuals with taxable income from a rental apartment can pay 10% tax on the gross income, rather than much higher marginal rates on the net, until 30 days after year end. That adds up to January 30th. According to the rhyme I learnt as a child, that is not the day January hangs up its boots – so paying on the last day of the month, although intuitively the thing to do, is too late. A miss is as good as a mile (although many experts might disagree in this particular case).

Companies that are eligible to maintain their books according to the Dollar Regulations, effectively reporting in foreign currency, are required to elect to do so by that same, busy, day – January 30th. Remember on January 31st – and you will be twisting through the year with the shekel.

Does somebody get their kicks out of tripping innocent taxpayers up with this sort of insidious nitpicking? Or, do the authorities just have a difficult time with numbers?

Posted in Israel and tagged Israel tax, John Fisher, US citizens | Leave a comment

14 Jan 2019

The Celtic Tiger changes its stripes

I can’t wait for 2046

The biggest debunker of conspiracy theories has to be what the British call ‘the thirty year rule’ for the declassification of secret documents. It is not that the released documents reveal the truth (the really juicy ones are locked up for far longer); it is, rather, the realization that the behind-the-scenes machinations of government way back then were far more chaotic than anything we imagined at the time. Conspiracies need thought.

So, my conspiracy theory about Ireland’s mammoth tax bill to pharmaceutical giant Perrigo towards the end of last year will probably be utterly disproven sometime in 2048. But, by then I will be either dead or too old to care. So, here goes.

The (undisputed) story:

In 2013 the (undisputed) Irish Elan Corp sold its interest in Tysabri, a multiple sclerosis drug, to Biogen Idec Inc for a lot of money. A few months later (undisputed) US corporation Perrigo Inc entered into an inversion transaction with Elan. The transaction involved the smaller Elan achieving ownership of Perrigo, with the Perrigo shareholders receiving a majority of the shares of Elan. The principal (undisputed) advantage to Perrigo was a reduction in future tax. This would be achieved by (calculated conjecture) including future non-US acquisitions under the Irish parent, thus bypassing the then draconian US tax system, and engineering debt from the US to the Irish parent. The latter would reduce US taxable income at 35%, and increase Irish taxable income at rates of between 0% and 25%, with the Irish foot secretly holding the scale at the lower end thanks to leprecaunish Irish wheezes such as the Double Irish and Single Malt schemes ( the Irish clearly chose names they were convinced could never be traced back to them).

Ireland is quite a distance

In December 2018 it became known that the Perrigo group (Elan had very cleverly changed its name to that of its new subsidiary) had been issued a bill by the Irish tax authorities for €1.64 billion. The justification was the reclassification of the profit on sale of the intellectual property to Biogen from trading income (somewhere between 0% and 12.5% tax) to capital gains (33%). Perrigo promptly announced that it was suddenly hard to run a US customer-service organization from the other side of the pond. It is now rumoured that the group is threatening shelving plans for expansion in Dublin unless, presumably, their appeal against the tax assessment is successful.

And now, the conspiracy theory:

As opposed to the $13 billion tax claim from Apple forced upon Ireland by the EU (poor Ireland), the issue here is what one commentator called Tax 101 – the party trick of tax advisers worldwide walking the tax classification tightrope between capital gains and trading income, ready at all times to pull the tax-saving bunny out of their moneybags. The sale of the IP was several months before Perrigo merged into Elan. It is to be presumed that Perrigo ordered a tax due diligence, and even if some bits and pieces were obscured by the Guinness, had some inkling of a potential €1.64 billion tax bill. Either they received an utterly obese indemnity from Elan’s shareholders, or there was a clear understanding from somewhere that lreland’s long-standing open-sewer policy of encouraging American investment at all moral cost meant that the authorities could be expected to stay out to a liquid lunch.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2018, and the US had a new tax law . The complementary regimes of Foreign-Derived Intangible Income on certain income of US companies from abroad, and Global Intangible Low Taxed Income of non-US subsidiaries, established a planning benchmark US effective tax rate in either case of around 13% . Add to that new inversion rules and restrictions on interest deductibility, and the question that comes to the befuddled mind is: ‘Why Ireland?’

So, what does a country do when its economic raison d’etre is disappearing down the sewer? It takes a leaf out of Donald Trump’s book – and thinks protectionism. But, in the case of Ireland – other than its beer and whiskey industries – there was precious little of its domestic economy to protect. Other than its tax advantage, that is.

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And where do you think you’re going?

In October 2018 the Irish budget included, as expected, Controlled Foreign Corporation provisions as required by the EU (see Tax Break 1/1/19). What wasn’t expected was the early imposition of an Exit Tax (which was not due until 2020). Companies wanting to expatriate from Ireland will now face a 12.5% ‘capital gains tax’ – or, in other words, they are pretty well stuck.

All this opened the door for the Irish Treasury to take off its kid gloves, and treat captive foreign companies just like any other. The Irish seem to be saying to Perrigo: ‘You can check out any time you like. But you can never leave.’ I wonder how many Irish-Americans there are in California.

Posted in Ireland and tagged International Tax, Ireland, John Fisher, Perrigo, Tax humor, Tax humour | Leave a comment

07 Jan 2019

Telling it like it isn’t

Very last call …

A rabbi, a priest and the secretary-general of the OECD walk into a bar… Not heard that one before? Read on.

Last Wednesday, January 2nd, as the 20th Knesset breathed its last before flatlining in the run-up to a General Election, the Finance Committee approved regulations paving the way for the introduction of the international ‘Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters’.

Game over

The New World Order, where there is nowhere for the less-than-honest to hide their ill-gotten gains, has been heading this way to much fanfare for some time. Too long, in fact. Israel signed on to the G20/OECD 2014 initiative early on, and was committed to having the necessary legislation in place by January 1st 2017. This was to be followed by necessary bi- or multilateral agreements (it committed to two multilateral ones), necessary bilateral commitments to ensure the other side would respect confidentiality – as well as being both legislatively and operationally sound – and technical guidance to Israel’s banks on how to provide data on accounts of foreign resident in standard international format (so they could be easily deciphered at the other end). Information exchange was to start in September 2018. In fairness, Israel didn’t score too badly other than on one rather critical point – although legislation was in place in mid-2016, well in time for the 2017 deadline, it could not come into force until accompanying regulations took effect.

Well, as the naysayers would have it, a miss is as good as a mile and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. By December 2018, there were only seven countries that were non-compliant: Antigua & Barbados, Brunei Darusallam, Dominica, Niue (is that a country or a spelling mistake?), Qatar, Sint Maarten and … Israel. This prompted a desperate letter from the secretary-general of the OECD to Israel’s prime minister, and the eleventh hour passing of the regulations last week, exactly two years and one day late. If you are going to be late, you might as well do it in style.

What went wrong?

The required regulations, as the American FATCA information exchange regulations before them, hacked at one of the mainstays of ultra-Orthodox society (and a much valued traditional Jewish institution) – the ‘Gemach’. The concept is a simple one. Groups of largely anonymous donors provide money to an intermediary who generally disburses the funds as interest free loans to those in need. In the event the borrower is unable to repay, the donors (who have generally kissed goodbye to the money) have no recourse. Until now, these arrangements have had no legal or regulatory basis – essentially private arrangements that could run into incredibly large sums. When FATCA came along, Israel’s banks started closing Gemach accounts as they were unable to verify to the US authorities that there were no US ‘depositors’. On the other hand, as the chairman of the Finance Committee repeatedly protested, requiring a donor who gets nothing other than a place in Heaven out of the whole process to fill in forms for the tax authority is a kiss of death for the institutions.

A solution was found, with the evident acquiescence of the US authorities, for small Gemachim, and in August 2016 Gemachim generally were given two years grace, in which time they would – against their will – be brought under regulation, and they could organize their affairs to be compliant for the banks. To cut a long story short, after a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth, including the flat refusal of the Bank of Israel and Capital Markets Authority to supervise them (The Capital Markets Authority lost, and ‘won’ the job), the very last piece of legislation to pass its third reading in the 20th Knesset was the attrition-much-reduced Gemachim Law, which paved the way for the Chairman of the Finance Committee to agree to approve the information exchange regulations.

The only thing crooked about him

Had the script of this farce been written by the 2008 financial crash’s moral voice, then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Finance Committee and Israel might have walked away with their heads held high. Williams had maintained that the ‘markets’ that bankers claimed dictated the path of the financial system, were – in Judeo-Christian – terms a form of idolatry, something man-made being attributed independent powers. He argued that modern financial transactions lacked the face-to-face component of yesteryear – it is much easier to default when lenders are obscured behind a curtain of intermediate transactions than when recognized at an individual or community level. Here were self-regulating funds that should not be collateral damage in the post-2008 meltdown regulatory war against the unfettered avarice of the players in the financial markets.

There are always the traditional methods

However, Anglicanism hasn’t had much of a look-in around these parts since 1948, and the ‘guilty’ Knesset Finance Committee was chaired until last week by an ultra-Orthodox rabbi-politician not given to philosophical musings, but rather to horse-trading in the name of his flock. The reason there was a need for a law regulating the Gemachim was that a number of them, predominantly in the United States and Israel, had been the facilitators of big-time money laundering and tax evasion. A war of attrition in the long process of arriving at the final wording, holding the inevitable (and, hence, unforgiveably late) information exchange regulations hostage, is considered to have severely compromised the regulatory effect of the law. Any collateral damage ultimately suffered by the moral majority of Gemachim is thanks, therefore, to the unsavoury dealings of some of their number, rather than the excesses of the financial system.

The last weak joke of the 20th Knesset…

Posted in Israel and tagged Exchange of Information, humor, humour, International Tax, Israel tax, John Fisher, OECD | Leave a comment

01 Jan 2019

Double Dutch

Another way to keep the tax bill down Back in the days when there were twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound, there was an urban myth of a retired Maths teacher who runs into his worst student as the latter climbs out of a Rolls Royce. The younger man embraces his old nemesis, proceeds to thank him for the great Maths education that enabled him to succeed, and declares: ‘I buy ties for a pound, sell them for one pound ten shillings (Google translate: £1.50), which means a ten per cent gross profit. My after-tax earnings are amazing’.

As 2018 was drawing to a close, Holland appeared to be having a similar problem with basic Maths in meeting its commitments to the European Union, albeit that the EU had itself been guilty of gross bureaucratic circumlocution.

How will the EU manage with the English language when the UK leaves?

In 2016, the EU issued its ambiguously entitled, ‘Anti Tax Avoidance Directive’, which might have been the credo of our low-taxed tie entrepreneur had it not been for the fact that the text made very clear that this was a pro-tax directive aimed at ensuring there was no avoidance. It was however a warning that members would be dealing with poor-language damage control. The Directive directed that interest limitations, exit tax, hybrid arrangements and controlled foreign corporations (CFCs) all had to be dealt with in individual national legislation by the end of 2018. So far, so clear.

As summer gave way to autumn (and, in some cases autumn gave way to winter) member states seemed to inexplicably vie for last place in the legislating stakes, despite having no ultimate choice – even the hapless British, who were hanging off the edge of the EU, had to comply.

There are other ways of solving the problem of offshore jurisdictions

As the stragglers came on board, thanks to the abovementioned Dutch, there was one curiosity deserving attention. The Controlled Foreign Corporation (CFC) has been with us since the week of the Cuban Missile Crisis (CMC) in October 1962, when John F Kennedy (JFK) signed the US version into law. In a nutshell, despite jurisdictions adopting various incarnations of CFC, the underlying nous is that certain income either parked in or diverted to a low-tax jurisdiction is to be taxed on a current basis in the hands of the parent as if a dividend has been distributed.

One of the features common to most CFC regimes is that the calculations are objective – identify the item and tax it. The EU version offers two options to choose from. Option A is the traditional method – identifying specific types of income, while Option B has CFC provisions stepping in where state-of-the-art Transfer Pricing isn’t satisfactory. Option B is clearly subjective, and seems to beg to be ignored (when was the last time a company volunteered that its transfer pricing wasn’t up to much?)

Common to both methods, however, is the ownership level triggering CFC, and the rate of tax below which the CFC legislation can apply. That last point is where the Netherlands appear to have lost track of the numbers, and the EU to have lost track of its mind.

I think I’ll stick with the mind reader

We all surely remember the ‘great’ mind-reading trick of our youth – telling some unwitting stooge (usually a younger brother) to ‘think of a number, double it, add X, divide by two, and take away the number you first thought of’. The answer, due to the rudiments of Mathematics, was always X/2.

Well, the Directive establishes low-tax for CFC purposes by the following calculation:

‘The actual corporate tax paid on its profits by the entity or permanent establishment is lower than the difference between the corporate tax that would have been charged on the entity or permanent establishment under the applicable corporate tax system in the Member State of the taxpayer and the actual corporate tax paid on its profits by the entity or permanent establishment.

Now, as hard as I try, I cannot interpret this gobbledygook as anything other than a horribly complex and roundabout way of arriving at half the parent company’s corporate tax rate. Almost all the EU member countries appeared to come to the same conclusion. However, not the Dutch. Perhaps the official Dutch translator in Brussels was drunk or stoned, but after a lot of bellybutton watching in recent months over an initially proposed 7%, they finally plumped at the eleventh hour for 9%. Despite wrestling with every combination of current and proposed higher-income and lower-income Dutch corporate tax rates, I could not justify 7% or 9% when fed into the above ‘equation’.

So, what is happening? As far as I can see – nothing. The EU bureaucracy is in Christmas hibernation, with instructions only to be aroused from its slumber by occasional wake-up coughs from the tiresome British.

It will be interesting to see if, now we are in the New Year, anybody notices.

Happy New Year – especially to my Dutch friends.

Posted in European Union, Netherlands and tagged European Union, John Fisher, Tax humor, Tax humour | Leave a comment

23 Dec 2018

Comfort and joy (for some)

This Prime Minister doesn’t need a babysitter

Several years ago I wrote a newspaper article about a fresh addition to the Israeli Income Tax Ordinance that included four subparagraphs. Or, at least, there should have been four subparagraphs. The fact that there were only three made the whole thing toothless. My tongue-in-cheek piece suggested a scenario where the Knesset Finance Committee was working late into the night, and the person with the most tax knowledge received a phone call that they had to relieve the babysitter – so they all went home. Joke – right? The following day I received a call from a senior tax official asking me how I knew. You couldn’t make it up.

If you pay peanuts….

The drafting of tax legislation in this country is often notoriously slapdash. But, that doesn’t explain all the problems with tax statute. For a start, there is the pain of keeping up with changing business environments – just look at the mess the international tax system is in over taxation of the digital economy. And then there is accounting. Corporate taxation is based on accounting profits. Once upon a time, thanks to the ancient simple art of double entry bookkeeping, the profit and loss account was a fairly close reflection of the dollars and cents performance of a company give or take capital expenditure, debts, liabilities, inventory, and the odd accrual . A few additions and deductions and the taxman could take his toll. An explosion of accounting standards plus that thing they call IFRS led, in recent years, to more adjustments to the accounting profit than fairy lights on a Christmas tree – but as long as tax departments kept their heads, it could be handled. Almost.

For reasons best known to the British Mandatory Authorities that planted the seeds of our tax law, dividends – while mentioned freely throughout the Ordinance – are not defined for tax purposes. The upshot is that they go according to company law and are ultimately calculated in line with the latest whim of the accounting wonks in their ivory towers. That means that a company can distribute either more or less than its taxed profits. It’s the ‘more’ that bothers us here – or more precisely the parties to a court appeal that was heard this month.

Israel adheres broadly to the classical system of taxation – corporate profits are taxed twice, first at the company level, and then in the hands of the individual on dividend. In order to avoid taxation mushrooming to three, four or heaven knows how many times, if there are several layers of companies passing dividends up the chain, Israel generally exempts intercompany dividends on which Israeli corporation tax has been paid. The second level of tax waits for distribution to the individuals right at the top.

General view of Buckingham Palace in central London.

Rumour has it, her great-great-great-great grandfather bought this place for a fiver.

That last paragraph probably sounds logical to anyone reading this – but it demanded a 39 page, beautifully reasoned ruling by the judge to put it to bed. The appellant company had received accounting profits from a subsidiary manufactured from the revaluation of certain real estate on which tax had, correctly, not been paid as the real estate had not been sold. The tax authorities and a judge had already told the appellant that the intercompany exemption didn’t apply. The company decided to try its luck on an appeal using a combination of sophistry (the wording – but not the intention – of the law was, indeed, pitiful), a real concern for future double taxation (the subsidiary would be liable to tax on sale of the real estate even though tax was being paid now by its parent), and a childlike plea that, if all else failed, could the nice judge please treat the whole thing as a nightmare and pretend the dividend didn’t happen.

The judge wasn’t having any of it. He countered their sophistry with his own, and treated the request to reverse the transaction like a parent explaining to a 6 year old that Santa doesn’t really exist. That was all reasonable and fine – but, it was the double tax issue that restored my faith in a system that so often seems broken.

The judge analyzed the concept of avoiding double taxation in Israeli law. He noted that, while the double taxation issue is an important principle underpinning the law, there are situations where double tax applies – predominantly where there is a change of ownership in-between certain transactions. Had the appellant sold the shares to a third party, its representatives would not have been in court arguing that – because the subsidiary company would have to pay tax again in the future on sale of the real estate (the value of the shares sold now would already have taken into account the increased value once), it should be relieved from the resulting double tax.

The Ten Commandments. Image shot 1956. Exact date unknown.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

So, armed with that logic, the judge rejected the appeal and insisted that tax was payable on receipt of the dividend. However, he literally ‘commanded’ the tax authorities to relieve any subsequent sale of the property from double tax, as long as there was no change of ownership in the meantime. That produced a result in parallel with normative Israeli law, as opposed to a narrow, literal interpretation that could have caused unnecessary hardship.

All too often, tax rulings rely on logic as much as a fish relies on a bicycle. Not this time.

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all those celebrating.

Posted in Israel and tagged humor, humour, International Taxation, Israeli courts, Israeli taxation, John Fisher | Leave a comment

16 Dec 2018

Tales from the Crypto

There were always a few kids in the class who refused to look at the camera

Kurt Vonnegut famously said: ‘True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country’. The G20 summit in Buenos Aires earlier this month spawned a myriad online articles about the international taxation of cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin etc). Intrigued by the efforts of my ‘classmates’ (most of them belong to my generation) to get their heads around a difficult subject, I delved in only to find an even truer terror: ‘To wake up one morning and discover that your children’s high school class is running the online economic press’.

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You could forgive the journalist for missing the nuance of the paragraph break

My suspicions were aroused when I noted that each and every article relied on the same statement of a Japanese news agency ‘drawn’ from the final declaration of the summit. To anyone with a modicum of tax knowledge, it was clear that the Japanese rumour-monger had got their taxes in a twist. With immense determination unknown to the younger generation, I spared no effort in googling: ‘G20 Buenos Aires final declaration’, the text of which, lo and behold, appeared before my very eyes. A further 5 minutes spent actually reading the entire thing (f-i-v-e whole minutes!) produced the answer. A bland paragraph including reference to the need to regulate crypto-assets against money laundering and terrorism, followed by another bland paragraph about BEPS that even my classmates could understand. Somebody clearly forgot to tell the Japanese reporter that there is a reason for paragraph splits in the English language, and somebody forgot to tell the on-line reporters – who it appears don’t know what it is to get off their backsides for a story – that they should not blindly rely on every piece of fake news they read online. Bottom line – the G20 summit was silent on the taxation of cryptocurrencies.

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At least the Germans have always understood what money is

In the meantime, cryptocurrencies have been in free fall, and the world’s tax authorities may be about to regret their approach. Although cryptocurrencies have been around for a while, tax authorities were slow to sink their teeth into them. By now, possibly encouraged by price increases in 2016 and 2017, most jurisdictions have come to the conclusion that they are legally assets rather than currencies. As such, the exemptions that often exist for individuals on exchange rate differences do not apply. In general, capital gains tax will be charged on realized gains (most authorities have at least managed to convince themselves that VAT should generally be avoided).But there is still confusion – as late as October 2018 an IRS Advisory Committee asked for certain clarifications from the IRS, while possible British taxation runs right across the spectrum depending on circumstances. Germany has a slightly different approach, having recognized them as money. At the same time, Israel took a literal view of the definition of currencies in its tax ordinance (cryptocurrencies do not qualify), and is there in the conservative pack.

And what’s wrong with gambling?

The catch for tax authorities is that, by insisting gains are taxable, they have to recognize losses as allowable – and the losses in 2018 have been horrendous. If that G20 paragraph on regulation is properly acted upon, the days of wild fluctuations may be numbered in 2019 – and the pain of what was a bad gamble by individuals on something totally speculative, will be irrevocably shared by national treasuries. Maybe it is time to pass the baton to my grandchildren’s generation.

Posted in International Tax and tagged Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, International Taxation, Tax humor, Tax humour | Leave a comment

09 Dec 2018

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Wakey-wakey!

Two minutes to midnight

It is the morning of the Maths exam that will decide which, if any, university awaits the candidate. He/she suddenly realizes that he/she hasn’t even started learning the syllabus.

How many of us have periodically woken in a cold sweat from that nightmare in the course of our adult lives?

I sometimes feel that, especially around the December full moon, tax advisers do their darnedest to induce such feelings in the populace with ‘Achtung!’ articles of what must be done (but clearly can’t be achieved) before drawbridges go up for the Christmas/New Year break.

Don’t panic!

I only ever tried to panic a prospective client once. (I warned a foreign company that they needed to get their VAT house in order to avoid risk of criminal prosecution, they ignored me and went to an alternative firm that proffered soothing advice, and they were criminally prosecuted two years later).

So, allow me to preface my remarks on Israel’s 10 year tax exemption period for first-time and certain returning residents by stressing that they are not aimed at those whose benefits end in the next few weeks, but rather in 2019 and thereafter. People who arrived on their equivalent of the Mayflower in 2008 (or earlier) are either sorted out, or the best of luck.

Everybody – that is the entire Jewish world, the OECD and the IMF – by now knows that Israel has operated a territorial tax system for first-time and certain returning residents since 2008 (with retroactive force to 2007). The law states that a first-time resident or veteran returning resident is exempt for ten years from income produced or derived outside Israel or whose source is in assets outside of Israel, as well as capital gains from the sale of such assets. The problem is that (from my experience) many mistakenly believe that, as long as they don’t go to work on a kibbutz milking cows, they can forget about tax for ten years. In reality, even those who do not incur any Israeli taxation during the exemption period need to be prepared for the day at the end of the decade when they fall off the tax cliff.

New olim, yes. New residents, perhaps

First of all the good news. Despite the drafting of the law being as hopeless as much other tax legislation in the country, more than ten years down the road the tax authorities seem to have made their peace with much of the excruciatingly inconsistent language, as well as the fundamentals of residence. Grammatical glitches appear to have been passed over unnoticed, and nobody seems to be bothered about the repeated careless use of the word ‘Oleh’ in pronouncements, aliyah not being a prerequisite for tax residence. 2018 saw the first annual filings of residents coming out of the ten years (for the 2017 tax year), and most of the reporting snafus will presumably be ironed out over the coming months. Similarly, some of the more heroic assumptions required as the assessee slowly glides out of the exemption period (there are special provisions for capital gains) can be expected to be blessed, or otherwise, by the authorities.

As people start to report, the authorities could take an interest in the exemption period, looking for amounts that should have been reported despite the exemption.

In any event, among the issues assessees need to be considering as the watershed approaches are:

When did they actually become resident? Although, in terms of the wording of the law, residence under domestic law as opposed to treaty is an annual thing, the authorities have repeatedly made clear in writing that they interpret it as something that can change mid-year. So far, so good. The problem is that their pronouncements on when the ten years actually starts have made clear it is not necessarily the night they give you a funny hat and a flag at Ben Gurion airport if, for example, there was already a home in Israel and/or significant time has been spent in Israel.
Are they sure none of their income was ‘produced or derived’ in Israel, and thus liable to tax? There have been rulings over the last decade concerning new residents working with foreign companies from Israel ‘by remote control’ through internet, e-mail etc, or trading foreign securities from Israel. The tax authorities are operating an amnesty procedure until the end of next year – although if an anonymous request is desired, it has to be made by the end of this month (ouch!).
Corporate structures abroad, while being convenient as long as Israeli taxation does not apply, may need reorganizing. That is something that generally needs to be done while the exemption is still in place.
Decisions need to be made regarding whether to realize assets – significantly parts of securities portfolios – before the end of the exemption period, or to benefit from the only gradual linear increase in capital gains in the post-exemption period.
Thanks to developing legislation since 2006, trusts are supposed to be largely tax neutral – but there are still some horrible jagged edges that can create nasty tax accidents . There are certain benefits to new-resident settlors or beneficiaries that soothe the pain as long as the exemption period lasts. The long-term future of such trusts needs to be considered.

Public Service Announcement

I sincerely hope this hasn’t scared anybody. I prefer to think of it as a Public Service Announcement. Really.

Posted in Israel and tagged exemption, humor, humour, Israel tax, Olim

03 Dec 2018

Bad Cumpany

‘Come, come Mr Bond’

If, like me, you have been wondering for decades what the European Parliament is there for, wonder no more. Following a recent vote, the august institution is considering setting up an investigations unit to tackle two humongous European fraud schemes named improbably ‘cum-cum’ and ‘cum-ex’. The first warning that something was afoot came in 1992, and the fan turned brown in 2017, but the wheels of power turn slowly in Strasbourg. (Or was it Brussels? Or Luxembourg?)

For those without a Latin education, the schemes translate as ‘with-with’ and ‘with-without’. It would be nice to leave it at that, but I had better explain.

Both schemes revolve around dividends on stocks. A stock is cum-dividend when a securities buyer is destined to receive a dividend that a company has declared but not paid. That is the status quo (more Latin) until the date at which the stock trades ex-dividend – when the dividend will go to the seller. Thanks to lacunae (Latin noun – first declension nominative plural, like mensa/mensae) especially in German law, but evidently in about ten other European jurisdictions, bankers and the other usual suspects were (possibly still are) able to bleed national treasuries of scarcely imaginable sums.

The cum-cum smacks more of an old-style tax avoidance scheme than hardcore evasion. Stocks of German companies held by foreigners who were not eligible to dividend witholding tax exemption were ‘lent’ (effectively sold with an agreement to repurchase , – but it isn’t written that way) to bona fide German banks shortly before a payment date. The stock went back at a lower price without the dividend. Naughty, but with loud protests that it only made hay while the legislators slept. There was one exemption, and the bank had a technical right to it.

He knew how to make sure a secret was kept

Cum-ex was a far dodgier form of exploitation, which did not rely on foreigners. It did, however, require collusion and, on the grounds that ‘two people can keep a secret as long as one of them is dead’, it was bound to be found out eventually (having said which, the German and other authorities seem to have made gargantuan efforts to miss what was going on beneath their noses). Basically, a bank would ‘borrow’ stocks cum-dividend within two days of the dividend payment date and would sell them (short) to a third party. Delivery was required in two days, by which time the stock had gone ex-dividend. The procedure in force until 2011 in Germany (and heaven knows what is still happening elsewhere) was that the bank had to make a compensatory transfer between the seller and the buyer for the net after-tax amount of the dividend, and then issue a certificate of withholding to the buyer even though he did not actually receive the dividend. The theory went that the seller would no longer be entitled to that withholding as he had transferred the dividend amount to the buyer, and therefore would not receive a withholding certificate. Aye, and there’s the rub. The short seller of the stock was not the ultimate owner and had not suffered the withholding tax. The ultimate owner also received a witholding tax certificate (if handled correctly, the number of withholding tax certificates could be multiplied) enabling two or more ‘owners’ to cash in on the same tax benefit. This is not clever tax avoidance. It is clearly tax evasion. And it has cost European state coffers an estimated €60 billion.

The words ‘company’ and ‘companion’ derived from the Latin ‘cum panis’ – with bread

But, at least we know we can now sleep safe at night in the knowledge that the European Parliament is on to it. It has only taken them 26 years. Rumour has it that MEPs are soon to issue a communique announcing the end of the Second World War. The suspense is killing.

Posted in European Union, Germany and tagged European Parliament, Germany, humor, humour, Tax fraud | Leave a comment