Wednesday, May 24, 2017

What a world... of Bottom Harbours

 Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent few hours on tax reform webinar?


"I think you're the opposite of paranoid. You go around with the insane delusion that people like you." 
-Deconstructing Harry (1997)


W.H.O.’S PERKS?: Bureaucrats at the cash-strapped World Health Organization (WHO) and IFM fly business class and stay in five-star hotels

I'm shocked! Czechoslovaks pilots Shocked in Casablanca

Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald to be stripped of NSW parliamentary pensions

 


Fraudster, 77, jailed for 'brazen' crimes


He's been a vet, a property developer and a BRW rich-lister but 77-year-old Stephen Michael Larkin is now back behind bars for his latest "brazen" and sophisticated fraud crimes

"Currently it is easier to become a company director than open a bank account. "

Labor proposes company director ID numbers in 'phoenixing' crackdown
The Opposition will today announce a plan to target phoenixing, where directors strip assets from businesses just before they go broke and open up new companies that rise from the flames of the old one.
Crackdown

There is nothing magical about phoenixing operations - Transcript, Doorstop
There is Nothing Megical


ASIC slaps ban on Nathan Tinkler over 'serious failures'

 




Inho Andrew Mun (J.D. 2017, Yale), Note, Reinterpreting Corporate Inversions: Non-Tax Competitions and Frictions, 126 Yale L.J. 2152 (2017)

Corporate inversions have drawn outrage from all segments of society. In an inversion, a company reincorporates abroad to escape its U.S. tax burden. Regulators and academics have typically sought tax law solutions to curb tax inversions. However, the resulting tax regulations have been ineffective, while more radical tax reforms are not politically feasible. This Note argues that inversion is not a tax problem in isolation, but a problem of aligning tax paid with benefits conferred by a given country. By introducing non-tax dimensions into the equation, this Note refines the oft-ignored benefit tax theory. The benefit tax theory proposes that the U.S. corporate tax regime accounts for superior legal and nonlegal benefits that companies enjoy by incorporating or operating in the United States. While paying U.S. tax, corporations receive the benefits of corporate governance, securities regulation, intellectual property law, and other areas of law; furthermore, benefits include many nonlegal business factors such as access to a large consumption market, skilled labor pool, capital markets, and more.


Airbnb uberWall Street Journal Tax Report: The Blind Spot in a Sharing Economy: Tax Collection, by Laura Saunders:

A loophole is helping gig-economy workers, online sellers and home-sharing hosts cheat on their taxes.

Under a law enacted in 2008 and later clarified by the Internal Revenue Service, many online-platform businesses that connect buyers and sellers and take credit-card payments, such as Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Etsy and ride-sharing firms, fall into a special category.

These businesses have to report a provider’s income to the IRS only if that person earns more than $20,000 and has more than 200 transactions. In that case, the company sends both the provider and IRS a Form 1099-K listing gross income.







China kills 'at least 12' CIA moles







'I'm just a pawn in her hands': Palmer says wife controls finances


The tax schemes are jokingly referred to as Bottom of the Harbour Pty Ltd, by members of the Sydney tax avoidance fraternity, as many of the documents have gone to a watery grave. As one, industry participant quipped: ‘There is a reef somewhere between Circular Quay and Manly which comprises suitcases full of company records’. Australian Financial Review 11 January 1980 as quoted in Boucher, T ‘Blatant, Artificial and Contrived: tax schemes of the 70s and 80s’, 1st ed, 2010, at page 215


 Plutus the police raids the ATO and-the real plutocrats

"The result wasn’t that falsehoods were accepted as facts but rather the creation of a ‘crust of lies’ so thick and pervasive, that people no longer believed anything at all. People became cynical, obedient or some combination of the two — and the wounds were so deep, I could still see scars in Prague nearly 20 years after Communism. I’ve been thinking a lot about this dynamic as political events unfold in the United States." Todd Milburn writing for Editor & Publisher about his work in Prague





Robert Wood,If You Pay Ransom, Write It Off On Your Taxes. “If you pay hackers ransom to keep your business operating, is it tax deductible?”
Robert D. Flach, DEAR GRADUATE. “As it is college graduation time I thought I would reprint some advice to recent graduates that I had given in a post from a couple of years back.”
Andrew Mitchel has 5 New Tax Charts. These are great helps in navigating branch transactions.
Liz Cuthbertson, UK Property – still the real deal? (Tax Plus Blog, U.K.). “Further tax complexity for real estate purchases has not cooled down and, from 6 April 2017, all UK residential property is in the scope of UK inheritance tax, regardless of the vehicle it is held in.”
Jack Townsend, District Court Denies Sufficiency Motion for Tax Evasion and Tax Obstruction. ” During the pretrial proceedings, Pflum thrashed around in various ways, including representing himself pro se at times. The jury convicted.”
TaxGrrrl,All Parties Claim Victory In Russian Money Laundering Case. It seems dangerous to be in the vicinity of upper-story windows in Russia.
Lew Taishoff, WENT FOR THE GOLD, GOT SILVER. “Whatever the fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, I look forward to plenty of good blogfodder therefrom.”
The Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police v Cranston and Ors [2017] NSWSC 624 (18 May 2017)