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Thursday, March 17, 2016

St Patrick: Middle Finger and Another Deloitte Schemes Bites the Dust

“Girls have seven lives, the old woman reflected. Not much makes them ill and they seldom die….[But] the only ones with seven lives are the girl children of the lowest class! They seem to have been multiplied on purpose, to punish their parents with a foretaste of hell in this world….Would it not be right, if only humans were not so blind, to assist the scourge that fluttered in the angels’ wings, instead of trying to pray it away?”—Hadoula, a grandmother and “healer.”
 ~Bathroom Quote (Dedicated to Jan Brunovsky and Sidka Kissova)


The young Irish songwriter with only a few demos to her name made quite the first impression at the SXSW music festival in Austin South X Lullaby: Holly Macve

 Russ Fox, Online Gambling Addresses Updated for 2016. Russ performs a valuable service in gathering street addresses of offshore online gaming websites. Online gaming accounts at these sites are “foreign financial accounts” for FBAR purposes, and you need a street address to fill out Form 114. They can be hard to find. Hat’s off to Russ

Are KPMG really masters of the universe?

A small flat white is expected to fetch north of $1, a real estate agent was told at his local café this morning.  The coffee – which eventually changed hands for $3.80 – went well above the quoted price, but was a reflection of market conditions, the café’s owner said
Irish Coffee with Dutch Sandwitch

Elaine Maag, Complicated Families: Complicated Tax Returns (TaxVox):
The law is built on the idea that a child lives in a traditional family – married parents with only biologically related siblings. The tax unit it is presumed to include the adults supporting the child.
But increasingly, children live in arrangements that belie that traditional family; children move between homes of divorced or never-married parents in formal and informal custody arrangements; children live with unmarried, cohabiting parents; children live in multigenerational households. In short, children are supported by adults in multiple tax units

Pella Green Girls ;-)  St Patrick's Day in Numbers

News from the Profession. Apparently Accountants Are Terrible on the Phone (Caleb Newquist, Going Concern)

Coffs Harbour has the Big Banana, Goulburn has the Big Merino and now Melbourne has the Big Kim Kardashian. If it wasn’t enough to have naked Kim Kardashian all over your social media feed, there is now a 9m tall mural of her latest selfie plastered on the side of a print shop in Melbourne. It’s believed a street artist by the name of lushsux is responsible for the artwork, and he/she told Mashable they felt the instant need to paint the massive mural after seeing the reality star’s nude selfie, which she posted on Twitter on March 7. "Maybe I’m as much of an attention seeker as she is?” said the graffiti artist, who added it wasn’t easy to pull off the feat.

Speaking of getting robbed twice: IRS shuts down ID-thief assistance portal. A week after The Tax Foundation pointed out that the IRS IP-PIN online portal made identity theft victims vulnerable to being victimized a second time, the IRS has temporarily shut it down:
As part of its ongoing security review, the Internal Revenue Service temporarily suspended the Identity Protection PIN tool on IRS.gov. The IRS is conducting a further review of the application that allows taxpayers to retrieve their IP PINs online and is looking at further strengthening the security features on the tool.

You’re A Rich Tax Dodger? No Problem, Says Canada Revenue Authority

“The truth, in this case, was that at least a million people were working or had worked for the Americans in one capacity or another, from shining their shoes to running the army designed by the Americans in their own image to performing fellatio on them for the price, in Peoria or Poughkeepsie, of a hamburger.” 
Money Laundering and the City of London's "Crime Scene": Haven of Tax Havens for the Mega-Wealthy
Draper, John William, Human Survival, Risk, and Law: Considering Risk Filters to Replace Cost-Benefit Analysis (January 30, 2016). Fordham Environmental Law Journal, Vol. 27, 2016 Forthcoming. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2745520 “Selfish utilitarianism, neo-classical economics, the directive of short-term income maximization, and the decision tool of cost-benefit analysis fail to protect our species from the significant risks of too much consumption, pollution, or population. For a longer-term survival, humanity needs to employ more than cost-justified precaution. This article argues that, at the global level, and by extension at all levels of government, we need to replace neo-classical economics with filters for safety and
feasibility to regulate against significant risk. For significant risks, especially those that are irreversible, we need decision tools that will protect humanity at all scales. This article describes both standards, their operations, and their interoperability. Further, it defends feasible risk reduction as an effective decision and regulatory tool.

Any moves to water down scrutiny of the Australian Taxation Office is being strongly resisted by tax and small-business lobby groups, and some government ministers. A federal inquiry is examining whether the Australian Taxation Office suffers from too much scrutinyLiberal MP Bronwyn Bishop said it was not up to the ATO how much scrutiny it faced from Parliament Moves to water down scrutiny-of ATO resisted by liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop
Quit your job

Youth unemployment the Sydney hot spots

Up to 13 Million Americans Are at Risk of Being Washed Away Bloomberg 

The crisis behind the headlines of corporate scandals

Industry body helping Cayman Islands Government dodge public beneficial ownership register

Tax haven Panama: giving the world the “middle finger”

Another Deloitte Schemes Bites the Dust - Read UK Supreme Court Judgement in UBS AG (Respondent) v Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs 

Two Cayman Island Financial Institutions Plead Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to Conspiring to Hide More Than $130 Million in Cayman Bank Accounts 

Credit Suisse probed in Italy in tax evasion case

The Basics of US Taxation of Offshore Trusts

The UK’s country-by-country reporting regulations look set to let most foreign companies off the hook

EU Commission welcomes agreement reached by Member States for the automatic exchange of information on country-by-country reports (CbCR) of multinational companies, subject to UK scrutiny

27 giant profitable companies paid no taxes