The #TaxTime 2019 season is over for self-preparers! 🎉 Thanks to everyone who lodged by 31 Oct, we kicked some whopping goals – a total of over 9 million #TaxReturns received & over $22 billion in refunds issued. Haven’t lodged yet? See your options @ www.ato.gov.au/lodge…
Tax Office Deputy Andrew Mills Retires
Google compiles links for AM
Tax professionals vital for small business success: ATO
Speaking at the Tax Institute’s 2019 Tasmanian State Convention, Mr Mills said the Tax Office regularly sees three key attributes in successful small businesses, with tax professionals the standout factor.
"While the ATO does a lot of work to mitigate the complexity of small business tax, we tend to find the single best predictor of success for a small business is whether or not they have a professional adviser,” Mr Mills said.
The ATO Assistant Commissioner, Jeff McAlister, told The Australian that the school tuition payments involved “significant payments in private school fees to a significant number of elite private schools” ...
Disclosure Offshore income today presentation
Obama tears into woke culture and purity tests: Former president says 'good people have flaws' | Daily Mail Online
HMRC is right to worry offshore account holders
There appears to be some concern this morning at the lack of resources at HM Revenue & Customs. The Sunday Times is reporting that: The
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- Gin-soaked ploy: the Tories' tax-haven and airports expo (31 Oct 2019)
- Counter-Strike trading found to be 'nearly all' money laundering (30 Oct 2019)
- Australia's 'backpacker tax' ruled invalid by court (30 Oct 2019)
- Shrink the City. It's the only way to stop the world's criminals flourishing in the UK
- Finance Curse: Who are UK banks lending to?
Bank lender guilty of home loan fraud to buy 30 units
A former Sydney bank lender has been found guilty of using fraudulent documents to secure inflated home loans from his employer before pocketing some of the profits.
John Bazouni, 43, faced trial in the NSW District Court over allegations he and three other men organised 22 fraudulent home loan applications between 2013 and 2014 with the intention of buying about 30 units in the same building at Nelson Bay, north of Newcastle.
- This report compares top effective marginal tax rates on labour income in 41 OECD and EU countries.
- The top effective marginal tax rate is the total tax paid on the last dollar earned by a high-earning worker, taking social security contributions and consumption taxes into account in addition to income taxes. It is a measure of the degree of progressivity and redistribution in the tax system. As such, it is of great policy interest.
- The highest marginal tax rate is found in Sweden, 76 percent, and the lowest in Bulgaria, 29 percent.
- In general, the Nordic and the Western European countries have the highest effective tax rates.
Ruth Mason (Virginia), Implications for Apple in the Lower Court Rulings in Starbucks and Fiat, 165 Tax Notes 93 (Oct. 7, 2019):
Wall Street Journal editorial, California’s Tax-the-Rich Boomerang: A New Study Shows the 2012 Tax Hike Drove High Earners From the State:
Democrats
in California have raised taxes on the rich again and again, and
liberals claim it has no effect on taxpayer migration and does no harm
to state tax revenue. A new study finds the opposite.
Wealth taxes have moved up the agenda
That’s the title of an article in The Economist. Traditionally economists have been unenthusiastic about wealth taxes, but in an echo of Piketty’s call for wealth taxes, the article points out that widening wealth disparities strengthen the case for such taxes, probably on very large inheritances and transfers. (They’re talking about real money, not the second-hand car you give your kids on their 18th birthday.)
The article cites a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research – Use it or lose it: Efficiency gains from wealth taxation. The abstract is written in the language of economists, but its basic argument that while traditional corporate income taxes apply most heavily to the most efficient enterprises (that’s why they are profitable enough to pay tax), wealth taxes also pick up wealth gained through idle speculation and low-productivity activities. To quote The Economist “Shifting the burden of tax from capital income to wealth, they argue, would reward investors capable of achieving outsize returns on their investments, and shrink the fortunes of those unwilling or unable to put their lucre to productive use.”
(The Economist allows non-subscribers up to three free articles a week – a generous allowance – but if you are not a paid-up subscriber you will have to register.)
Corporate taxes on the tech giants
The OECD has released a paper Secretariat Proposal for a “Unified Approach” under Pillar One. Its title gives little indication of its content: it’s about ways to collect more (or any) tax from companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook, renowned for shifting their operations to low-tax jurisdictions. The OECD paper is a model of bureaucratic turgidity, but it is basically about establishing formulaic rules for allocating profits between jurisdictions.
Writing on the ABC website, Nassim Khadem explains that the OECD approach will fall short of collecting a reasonable amount of revenue from these corporations. Prominent economists, including Wayne Swan, are seeking a stronger way to tax such footloose enterprises.
California Attorney, a Prior Tax Offender and Embezzler, Pleads Guilty to tax Evasion
James Roy McDaniel, 66, who pleaded guilty before United States District Judge S. James Otero to one count of tax evasion, is scheduled to be sentenced on February 3, 2020. At sentencing, McDaniel could receive a statutory maximum sentence of five years imprisonment.
Government Alleges Misconduct By Attorney in FBAR Related Summons Enforcement Case
Written misses
How on earth did anyone get the idea that people can communicate with one another by letter! Of a distant person one can think, and of a person who is near one can catch hold - all else goes beyond human strength. Writing letters, however, means to denude oneself before the ghosts, something for which they greedily wait. Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.If kisses fail, how about licks?
Kafka, in a letter to Milena.
Liberty's sword: links
"What is the Kafkaesque?" asks Alexander Provan in his piercing discussion of Kafka via five recent books, including Mark Harman's new translation of Amerika. "It is, as Walter Benjamin wrote, the form which things assume in oblivion." It is surprising that Louis Begley believes the sword in Liberty's hand seen by Karl Rossmann at the entrance to New York harbour is "a slip of the pen." Rather, it is "a deliberate alienation effect, immediately placing the promise of America in quotation marks and situating the reader in a slightly disfigured reality, where metaphorical figures become as palpable and unyielding as concrete and steel."
Elsewhere, in Understanding the Crisis — Markets, the State and Hypocrisy, Chomsky seeks to counter the mythology that "the economy is based on entrepreneurial initiative and consumer choice".
Finally, Mobylives provides more background on La Nouvelle Revue Francaise following its 100th anniversary. Along the way, it mentions Jonathan Littell's contribution to the centenary edition. As it seems to have gone more or less unnoticed, I'll remind everyone that you can read this inCharlotte Mandell's translation on this very site.
Elsewhere, in Understanding the Crisis — Markets, the State and Hypocrisy, Chomsky seeks to counter the mythology that "the economy is based on entrepreneurial initiative and consumer choice".
[W]ell ok, to an extent it is. For example at the marketing end, you can choose one electronic device and not another. But the core of the economy relies very heavily on the state sector, and transparently so. So for example to take the last economic boom which was based on information technology — where did that come from? Computers and the Internet. Computers and the Internet were almost entirely within the state system for about 30 years — research, development, procurement, other devices — before they were finally handed over to private enterprise for profit-making. It wasn't an instantaneous switch, but that's roughly the picture. And that's the picture pretty much for the core of the economy. The state sector is innovative and dynamic. It's true across the board from electronics to pharmaceuticals to the new biology-based industries. The idea is that the public is supposed to pay the costs and take the risks, and ultimately if there is any profit, you hand it over to private tyrannies, corporations. If you had to encapsulate the economy in one sentence, that would be the main theme. When you look at the details of course it's a more complex picture, but that's the major theme. So yes, socialization of risk and cost (but not profit) is partially new for the financial institutions, but it's just added on to what's been happening all along.
Finally, Mobylives provides more background on La Nouvelle Revue Francaise following its 100th anniversary. Along the way, it mentions Jonathan Littell's contribution to the centenary edition. As it seems to have gone more or less unnoticed, I'll remind everyone that you can read this inCharlotte Mandell's translation on this very site.
The How and the Why of Law Blogs – Legal technology evangelist, author and blogger Nicole L. Black recommends that a legal blog is one of the best ways to create a memorable and search-engine-friendly online presence. Simply put, blogs are a great way for lawyers to showcase legal expertise while increasing their firms’ search engine optimization—all while helping them to stay on top of changes in their areas of practice by writing about them on their firm’s blog.
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