The English language often lags scientific progress. We still 'turn on the radio', even if none of us have seen a dial in years. When my kids were growing up, I always reminded them to 'pull the chain' even though toilet flush mechanisms had long been more user-friendly. And today, our computers offer us the…
Bog standard (almost)
Charles Dickens's fecund imagination allowed Pip's benefactor Magwitch to return to England from transportation to an Australian penal colony, albeit at risk of judicial execution. By all accounts, thanks to the triple-knot of location, location, location, escape for real-life transportees wasn't all that simple. What the desperate convicts of the nineteenth century needed was the…
Dead Wrong
It's bad enough that, thanks to the controversy surrounding Brexit, the average Briton no longer lives with peace of mind. From April 1 they will no longer die with peace of mind. A headline-grabbing exaggeration perhaps, but probate fees for opening a file to deal with a deceased person's estate are due to jump from…
Telling it like it isn’t
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…
Comfort and joy (for some)
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…
Wakey-wakey!
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…
Bad Cumpany
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,…
Before our very eyes!
When it comes to aphorisms, 'Oldie but Goodie' is high on my list of suspect examples. Generally quoted by the generation above mine to fill the void of laughter following a particularly hackneyed joke, it only rolls happily off the tongue when served with lashings of irony. Such was my reaction to a ruling published…
It’s just not cricket
Last month's news from India, that tax residency certificates would no longer be a must for foreigners claiming treaty benefits, will come as a welcome relief to the finance departments of organizations doing business with that great country. Obtaining certificates of residence can be a pain in the neck, especially when they are needed quickly.…
The taxman takes his cut
Initially dubbed 'the war to end all wars', the act of carnage that ended a hundred years ago this week had to later suffer the ignominy of having 'First' stuck at the front of its name. While recognizing the sacrifice of the combatants and the tragedy of 20 million dead, subsequent generations have suggested the…
Tax Break 