Horror movies reflect our worst nightmares. The Day of the Triffids and The Little Shop of Horrors were classic examples involving man-eating plants. For those of us who dream tax, there has always been ‘The Company that Purchased its own Shares’, not a Hollywood Blockbuster, but a Tax Brainbuster. The plot is quite simple. A…
Language is notoriously ambiguous, especially when it comes to official documents. A hundred years ago, the traitor Sir Roger Casement was hanged on a comma in the English Treason Act of 1351. Just this week, I had a long discussion around an exceptionally poorly worded clause in the Israel Income Tax Ordinance, the various interpretations…
If Economics is an inexact science, Transfer Pricing is alchemy. A recent court case involving the sale of describe-them-anyway-you-like intangibles by an Israeli company to its US multinational parent was a cautionary tale to anybody thinking of selling or gifting an asset to a foreign relative – be it a son, niece, Elon Musk, or…
When it comes to morality, Value Added Tax has no claim to Kant’s categorical imperatives, nor Utilitarianism’s mission to provide the greatest happiness to the greatest number. As a regressive tax on consumption, it eats away disproportionately at the income of the poor, who spend a significantly higher proportion of their income on vatable goods…
In A.S. Byatt’s 2009 masterpiece ‘The Children’s Book’, the reader has one horrible advantage over the predominantly young characters in the novel. As they gradually grow and mature through the closing years of the 19th century and the Edwardian decade that followed, the carefree youngsters are surrounded by art and privilege, several poignantly attending the…
‘Plutocracy’ is viewed generally as a dirty word. The idea (if not the practice) of government by the wealthy is anathema to those who treasure democracy. At first whiff the OECD Secretariat’s proposal for a unified worldwide approach to the taxation of the digital economy, issued for consultation earlier this month, failed the plutocratic…
My first suspicion that authority wasn’t all it was cracked up to be was at the age of 10, when I saw Lionel Bart’s newly released Oliver! Between the catchy numbers and faux-dirty actors there were two clear messages – the inhumanity of the workhouse system and Mr Bumble’s ‘The law is a ass,…
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…
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…
Among the moral influences on my childhood, and that of my fellow English countrykids, was Hilaire Belloc's 'Cautionary Tales for Children'. Entering the Land of Nod at night to the story of Jim who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a lion, or Matilda who said lies and was burnt to death,…
Tax Break 