Given the plot of the recently released movie ‘Yesterday’, it is ironic that I can’t get the Beatles out of my mind. A ruling published by the Israeli tax authority around the time the latest blockbuster hit the screens sent me on my own magical mystery tour. What, I hear you ask, could tax have…
Eurotunnel vision
After arriving in London en route to America, an acquaintance's grandfather decided to kill time at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. It was 1906, and he, similar to my own grandparents, had fled a pogrom in Russia. Despite having his heart set on New York, he changed his mind when he heard an itinerant speaker…
GILTI pleasures
Just when you thought it was safe to put the Ibuprofen back in the medicine cabinet, the IRS has issued proposed GILTI (Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income) regulations in addition to the long anticipated final ones. (For an explanation of what was supposed to be going on, see Tax Break February 10, 2019). Back in my…
Fair fight?
Underdog Andy Ruiz's technical knock-out of world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua in their fight on June 2 was one of sporting history's great surprises. Similarly, civil court cases against the tax authorities are rarely won by the underdog, generally ending with a knock-out - technical or otherwise - of the assessee. There was an exception…
Who stole the punch line?
I am rarely amused by the pronouncements of the Israeli tax authority - au contraire, they often rile me. But, last week a public ruling had the effect of diverting my mind to the comedy double acts that had their origins in America's Vaudeville and Britain's Music Halls. Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Morecambe…
Votes for taxpayers!
I was sorry to hear that former US president and Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carterhad broken his hip last month. I was not sorry to hear that the incident had ruined his planned turkey hunt in his home state of Georgia. I - like the lion's share of the western world - have a visceral…
Tales from the Crypt…
In a landmark Israeli court case last week, it was decided that Bitcoins are assets, the profit on sale of which attracts capital gains tax. The case revolved largely, but not exclusively, around the question of whether such cryptocurrencies meet the description of – well - currencies, exchange differences arising from which are exempt from…
Hand it over and nobody will get hurt
The ink on the page of my last post about the new softer, gentler approach to tax collection was not yet dry when Israel's main financial daily ran a banner headline concerning the upcoming automatic exchange of information between tax authorities. The wording was a rather unimaginative: ' A flood of requests from foreign banks…
‘Your money or your life, please!’
Stopped in the street by a young person with a clipboard, and asked: 'What do you think motivates people to pay tax?', I would have to answer honestly: 'Five to ten, with time off for good behaviour'. Were my inquisitor brandishing a microphone and staring into a camera, however, the same question might elicit all…
What a laugh!
The irony of Ukraine's recent election of a Jewish president would not have been lost on my grandparents who fled the Odessa pogrom of 1905, but they would have been utterly bamboozled - along with millions of members of their grandson's generation - by the news that he is a satirical comedian. On the other…
Tax Break 