International taxes

Multinational corporations could end up shifting even more of their income to low-tax countries under some tax reform proposals, according to a new study.

The Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to prod taxpayers to disclose their offshore bank accounts and pay taxes on their holdings have reached the $10 billion mark and prompted over 100,000 taxpayers to come forward, the IRS said Friday.

The United Arab Emirates is setting up a federal tax authority that will be in charge of collecting levies, as the oil-rich Gulf nation seeks to diversify its revenue base with value-added taxation.

The U.S. Treasury Department softened new rules aimed at preventing multinational companies from shifting their profits offshore to lower-tax countries—a response to sustained criticism from big business and from members of Congress, who had asked that they be delayed and scaled back.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service have released final regulations on earnings stripping in an effort to reduce the tax benefits of corporate inversions.

Facebook Inc. is carrying on its fight with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service over taxes relating to its transfer of global operations to Ireland in 2010.

Police in India have raided nine call centers in Mumbai and arrested 70 people who were calling phone numbers in the United States pretending to be Internal Revenue Service demanding payment for taxes.

Accounting firms of all sizes should start looking for success by venturing abroad

A group of advocacy organizations is urging the Financial Accounting Standards Board to require multinational companies to disclose more information about their taxes.

The Wildenstein family of art dealers sold more than 600 pieces since the turn of the century, generating around $300 million in cash to fund their lifestyle, and has works worth nearly three times that much in storage, according to a banker who has intricate financial knowledge of the clan’s dealings.

Members of the wealthy Wildenstein art-dealing family finally went on trial over fiscal fraud allegations after a French judge rejected a second bid to delay the case to allow French tax authorities to finish a related investigation.

The Internal Revenue Service spent $15 million on a delayed implementation of an upgraded system for handling an aspect of the Foreign Account Tax and Compliance Act, but the software did not deliver the expected business results, according to a new report.

Roy Weathers recently stepped into the role of tax leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ U.S. firm, where he plans to increase diversity and technology use.

The U.S. Treasury Department took fresh steps on Thursday to curb tax avoidance by multinational corporations, issuing new curbs on a loophole through which companies artificially use credits for foreign taxes they pay to improperly lower their U.S. tax bills.

When Apple Inc. was ordered by European regulators to pay $14.5 billion plus interest in back taxes to Ireland, the giant technology company seemed to be facing an expensive headache. Turns out it’s a headache for the U.S. Treasury Department as well.

Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan hit back at the European Union after it ordered him to recoup a record 13 billion euros ($14.7 billion) from Apple Inc., saying his country is leading the way on countering tax avoidance.

About two weeks after Denmark revealed it had lost as much as $4 billion in taxes through a combination of fraud and mismanagement, the minister in charge of revenue collection says that figure may need to be revised even higher.

Ireland’s government agreed to fight this week’s European Union decision forcing Apple Inc. to pay it vast tax arrears, ending a squabble which threatened to destabilize Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s administration.

When I told my wife that I was working on the Apple story, she told me that it’s already been covered—in the Book of Genesis. She’s right, of course, since good versus evil permeates many of the issues in the current tax landscape.

The European Commission’s finding that Ireland must collect as much as an attention-getting 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) in back taxes from Apple Inc. contained a second stunning number: 0.005 percent.