In his bestelling book, ‘Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’, Giles Milton tells the story of the destruction of Peugeot’s factory in Occupied France. The facility had been commandeered for German military production. One night, Bomber Command ordered the dropping of a massive amount of ordnance on the plant, only to discover the following day…
Hoisted with their own petard
In Tudor times it was traditional for condemned gentlemen to pay their own executioner. The equivalent in my world is the statutory requirement to report any of a series of positions taken in a tax return that the tax authorities do not agree with. The tax inspector no longer needs the deductive powers of a…
English as a very foreign language
Several years ago, I returned from a quick trip to Paris on El Al Business Class. As everybody knows, El Al’s security measures are peerless, but just before the gate at Orly airport, the French insisted on putting us all through a second metal detector. I buzzed. Now, I am a big believer that there…
The long and winding road
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…
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…
Tax Break 