Tax avoidance

The European Union is on course to hand dozens of U.K.-based companies a pre-Brexit tax bombshell, according to people familiar with a state-aid probe that could lead to bills exceeding 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion).

The U.S. lost a bid to help Apple Inc.’s court fight against the European Union’s order to pay Ireland a record 13 billion euros ($15.3 billion) in unpaid taxes.

A key figure disappeared from Apple Inc.’s latest quarterly report. It’s also gone from the regulatory filings of Netflix Inc., Microsoft Corp., Google’s Alphabet Inc. and Oracle Corp.

The iPhone maker will start transferring billions of euros to Ireland within months, after reaching a deal on an account to hold the cash while it fights a European tax case.

Vague disclosures by public companies about how much they’re paying in taxes don’t appear to be deterring investors, according to a new study.

The Internal Revenue Service provided additional information Tuesday to help corporate taxpayers deal with the new section 965 transition tax for repatriating foreign profits under the tax law that Congress passed in December.

The Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday it plans to close the 2014 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program on Sept. 28, 2018 and will start winding it down before that date.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google moved 15.9 billion euros ($19.2 billion) to a Bermuda shell company in 2016, saving at least $3.7 billion in taxes that year, regulatory filings in the Netherlands show.

Ikea is the latest company ensnared in the European Union’s sprawling tax probes as regulators look at whether the retailer’s revenue deals in the Netherlands allowed it to avoid hundreds of millions of euros of taxes.

Amazon.com Inc. will pay 100 million euros ($118 million) to the Italian tax authorities for the period of 2011-2015 in a settlement that closes the fiscal probe by the country’s tax police, Italy’s Revenue Agency said in an emailed statement Friday.

In Vanuatu, a remote archipelago in the South Pacific, a popular tourist attraction is something called land diving. Villagers on the lush outer island of Pentecost jump headfirst from a tall wooden tower with tree vines tied to their ankles to break their fall. For the divers, the rite of passage is a plunge into the unknown—and that’s not a bad metaphor for where this secretive tax haven is headed these days.

U.S. companies that make billions of dollars from patents and other intellectual property held offshore would be eligible for a special 12.5 percent tax rate on those earnings under the Senate tax plan.

The days in paradise may be numbered for those seeking refuge from heavy tax burdens in remote islands. Finance ministers representing the world’s largest market vowed to take action following the leak of records exposing prominent members of the global business A-list.

Multinational companies including Apple Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Ford Motor Co. would face a new tax on payments they make to offshore affiliates under the House Republicans’ tax bill—a surprise provision that has stunned tax experts.

House Republicans should slow down their consideration of a tax-overhaul bill after investigative reports Sunday alleged offshore tax-avoidance by U.S. multinational companies including Apple Inc. and Nike Inc., congressional Democrats and tax-advocacy groups said.

A group of seven Senate Democrats and one independent has written a letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board asking FASB to require multinational corporations to disclose their taxes, profits, and revenues on a country-by-country basis, echoing a recent letter from a group of House lawmakers.

The Internal Revenue Service has needed to significantly cut back a program that automatically followed up with people who failed to file a tax return, due to budget constraints, according to a new report.

Amazon.com Inc. was slapped with a European Union order to pay 250 million euros ($294 million) plus interest in back taxes to Luxembourg as the world’s biggest online retailer became the latest U.S. giant to run afoul of the bloc’s tough rules on government subsidies.

The European Commission will outline on Thursday different options for taxing digital companies as the 28-nation bloc seeks to raise money from an industry that it says provides less than it should to public coffers.

It took two days after Hurricane Irma ripped through the British Virgin Islands, damaging or destroying an estimated 70 percent of the territory’s buildings, for the Caribbean tax haven to start piecing back together its lucrative corporate-registry business.