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…
Ain’t no Bonanza
Jay Leno once went walkabout in New York asking innocent passers-by if they could name a country beginning with the letter 'U'. Apart from the usual camera induced deer-in-the-headlights non-responses, a few bright sparks came up with Uganda and Uruguay. At the close of the piece, as the camera faded out, Leno was heard asking:…
Prospecting for tax
If you hear the term: 'sans frontieres', it is odds on that - after 'French' - the first thing that will come into your mind is 'Medicins Sans Frontieres', that truly remarkable international humanitarian medical NGO founded in 1971 and based in Switzerland. Add to that 'Avocats Sans Frontieres', the human rights lawyers, and a…
Monkey business
In its relentless efforts to clean us all up, the Israeli Tax Authority has just thrown another spanner in the works of the well-greased black market. Meek householders faced by odd-job men demanding cash as they flex their bulging muscles, not to mention seasoned mafiosi and disgraced politicians, will be questioning my timing. Surely, the…
Embrace the Model Treaty
When wheelchair bound 'Ironside' star Raymond Burr walked confidently down the aircraft steps at Lod Airport in 1974, the reaction of the Israeli public was something akin to the second coming. Still caught in the long shadow of the Yom Kippur War, Israelis were far closer to Tom Brokaw's 'Greatest Generation' than consumerist 1970s Western…
GILTI until proven simple
Appearing on Johnny Carson's Tonight show in 1975, the ex-governor of California quipped: 'We live in the only country in the world where it takes more brains to figure out your income tax than it does to earn the income.' A little over a decade later, the same gentleman put his pen where his mouth…
Watch this space
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…
Keep Calm and Carry On
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…
It could have been 1984
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…
The Celtic Tiger changes its stripes
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…
Tax Break 