Links Mar 30

Some news via ATAF's Kodi Katika Afrika, hat tip: Sandra Kidwingira:

Tax muscle-flexing Financial News
Mar 22 - "An important policy shift is taking place, of which business, especially multinationals, should take heed: not only are tax administrations becoming more aggressive, they are becoming more effective."

Revenue Authority Clamps Down On Tax Cheats GhanaWeb
Mar 19 - "Information filtering in from the Domestic Tax Revenue Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) indicates that through the Authority’s Tax Identification Number System (TIN) it will begin to clamp down on some businesses and individuals evading taxes in the country."

Africa: Effective Taxation Critical to Nation Building allAfrica
Mar 12 - Analysis and discussion on how "taxes are an integral component of institution-building, growth, and democracy", and "the importance of building the capacity of tax collecting institutions, as part of a larger social contract between government and citizens".

Transfer pricing: A rule worth scrutiny The East African
Mar 10 - "Kenya is fast becoming a hub for the management of company operations in the East African region. As KRA seeks to improve tax efficiency and thereby increase its tax collections, multinational enterprises, in particular, need to be concerned with the transfer price applied on the supply of goods and services between associated enterprises."

Foreign investors complain at India tax provisions Reuters
Mar 28 - "Foreign brokerages are complaining at recent Indian provisions to tax indirect investments and combat tax evasion, saying they are couched in ambiguous language and could also be used to target overseas market investors, risking a sell-off in markets."

Taxes of Rs 181 crore realised in HSBC bank Geneva cases Economic Times
Mar 30 - "The Income Tax department has realised taxes of about Rs 181 crore with respect to the cash deposits of Indians who had unreported accounts in HSBC bank Geneva."

Philippines collects 9 pct more tax than expected in Feb TrustLaw
Mar 29 - "Manila has been trying to fight tax evasion and corruption in the collection process, rather than raising taxes."

U.S. Tax-Evasion Probes Said to Slow as Prosecutors Transfer Bloomberg
Mar 27 - "The U.S. Justice Department has lost almost 30 percent of its tax prosecutors in the past month, slowing a U.S. crackdown on offshore banks that enabled tax evasion, according to four people familiar with the matter."

Credit Suisse Asks U.S. Clients on Tax, Aargauer says Bloomberg
Mar 24 - "Credit Suisse asked U.S. clients to confirm they filed their 2010 United States tax return, Aargauer Zeitung said, citing unnamed employees and an Switzerland-based client with both U.S. and Swiss citizenship. The lender also asked U.S. clients to disclose the name of their tax consultants."

The question of tax evasion Times of Malta
Mar 30 - "There could be a middle-of-the-road solution, which is raising the social stigma of tax evasion, such that there can no longer be any pride to be had in outsmarting the system. Fundamentally, we need to stop thinking that tax evasion is a tricky question – it is not as without taxation our society cannot survive."

Italy recovers €12.7bn from tax evasion Irish Times
Mar 29 - "Italy recovered €12.7 billion from tax evasion in 2011, up 15.5 per cent from the amount it retrieved in 2010 after stepped up surveillance and collection efforts ...The struggle against tax evaders has taken high prominence in recent months Hat tip: Offshore Watch.

The UK may have signed a dodgy deal with the Swiss but the Germans are seeing sense Tax Research UK
Mar 30 - Richard Murphy comments on the story TJN blogged yesterday.

UK: HM Revenue & Customs sends its tax inspectors back to college The Telegraph
Mar 29 - "After being accused of making “sweetheart” deals with big companies and losing a tax evasion trial against Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp in February, HMRC is to link up with Manchester Metropolitan University to retrain its taxmen."

The United States, UK, hooked on offshore Treasure Islands
Mar 29 - Nick Shaxson on an IMF Working Paper from 2010: Bilateral Financial Linkages and Global Imbalances: a View on The Eve of the Financial Crisis - "There is no general agreement on what constitutes ‘offshore’ but the IMF and others tend to take an overly restrictive view."