International taxes

UBS Group AG questioned investigators’ dealings with a whistleblower who provided documents and evidence about an event for wealthy clients at the French Open that helped lead to a record 4.5 billion-euro ($5.4 billion) penalty.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen added an international tax policy expert to her staff as the U.S. reverses a Trump-era stance over digital taxation of technology companies.

The U.S. has dropped a key demand in negotiations over digital taxation of technology companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc., lifting a barrier that had raised transatlantic trade tensions and prevented an international deal.

Governments around the world are confronting budget deficits due to the COVID-19 pandemic and corporate tax leaders are worried about higher tax assessments, double taxation, penalties, interest and surcharges.

His story reveals the far-reaching net that continues to entangle individuals and firms who were engaged in so-called Cum-Ex transactions, almost a decade after the dividend-tax practice ended.

With blacked out or blank television screens, front pages and web portals, Poland’s private media companies protested against plans to implement a new advertising tax they say is a disguised government attempt to muffle criticism.

Former investment banker Paul Mora is the first Cum-Ex suspect placed on Interpol’s public list of most-wanted suspects as Germany launched an international search for him in an escalation of its vast tax-evasion probe.

Five international tax enforcement heads, including from the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation unit, have been meeting this week to discuss their joint initiatives for combating tax evasion.

The European Union is seeking to overturn Apple Inc.’s victory in a 13 billion-euro ($15.7 billion) tax dispute, saying judges used “contradictory reasoning” when they found that the company’s Irish units weren’t liable for huge payments.

German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said President Joe Biden’s administration has shown a readiness to clinch an agreement on how to tax global tech companies, potentially overcoming an American block and paving the way for an accord later this year.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday talked with her U.K. and German counterparts about resolving mushrooming disputes over the taxation of internet giants such as Facebook Inc., highlighting the issue as a priority in her initial bilateral calls.

The year ahead will be full of tax uncertainties in the U.S. and internationally, ranging from digital taxes and carbon taxes to possible tax hikes under the Biden administration.

A second hedge-fund trader was named by Danish prosecutors as a defendant in a dividend tax scheme they say defrauded the Nordic country out of 9.6 billion kroner ($1.6 billion).

Europe and the U.S. should jointly adopt a carbon tax on imports as a means to promote low-emission production globally, according to the leaders of Germany’s Greens, the country’s No. 2 political force.

Deutsche Bank, TP ICAP and two German lawyers are the targets of M.M. Warburg & Co.’s latest legal attempt to recoup the big tax bill it was ordered to pay over controversial Cum-Ex trades.

The U.S. added Austria, Spain, and the U.K. to the string of countries it says are discriminating against American companies through their decisions to tax local revenue of internet giants such as Facebook Inc.

Tax advisory firms took a projected $3 billion hit on their revenues around the world last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report.

The U.S. will suspend a plan to hit $1.3 billion of French goods with tariffs in retaliation for the European country’s tax on the revenue of global tech companies.

Sanjay Shah, who founded a London hedge fund that specialized in controversial Cum-Ex trades, was charged by Danish prosecutors in a 9.6 billion-krone ($1.6 billion) tax-fraud probe, according to a person familiar with the case.

The company said that it was repatriating intellectual property licenses to the U.S.