International

  • June 27, 2024

    Congress Shouldn't Rush OECD Tax Package, Group Says

    Congress should avoid "rubber-stamping" the two pillars of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's plan to fight tax base erosion and profit shifting and instead gather more information on its impact on the U.S., a conservative advocacy group said Thursday.

  • June 27, 2024

    IRS Tells 10th Circ. To Deny Liberty Global's $110M Refund Bid

    The U.S. government urged the Tenth Circuit on Thursday to reject telecommunication giant Liberty Global's push for a $110 million tax refund, arguing a lower court correctly deduced that the company's business restructurings were carried out solely to avoid tax.

  • June 27, 2024

    $2.1B Danish Tax Fraud Suspect Won't Testify, Court Says

    A New York federal court denied dueling requests from U.S. pension plan investors accused of participating in a $2.1 billion Danish tax fraud scheme and from Denmark's tax agency to bring in the man that both sides say masterminded the scheme, or to bring in one of his employees.

  • June 27, 2024

    Ex-Skadden Tax Head And M&A Pro Joins Freshfields In NY

    Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP has added the former head of the tax practice at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP as a partner this week, who brings to the role experience in deals like 21st Century Fox's $71 billion acquisition by Disney and the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.

  • June 27, 2024

    New FATCA Deal Requires US Banks To Share Info With Swiss

    The United States and Switzerland signed a Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act agreement that will require U.S. banks to share financial account information on a bilateral basis, Switzerland's Federal Department of Finance announced Thursday.

  • June 27, 2024

    Algeria Commits To OECD Tax Treaty Standards

    Algeria signed on to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's multilateral convention Thursday, committing to implement the group's standards to fight base erosion and profit shifting in bilateral tax treaties, the OECD said.

  • June 27, 2024

    New EU Chair Wants VAT Deal Despite Calendar Omission

    The incoming chair of meetings of European Union countries wants agreement on a proposal to require that platform companies such as Airbnb and Uber collect value-added tax for service providers despite leaving it off its work calendar, a spokesperson said.

  • June 26, 2024

    EU Court Tosses Spanish Shipping Cos. State Aid Appeal

    A European court on Wednesday once again dismissed a 2014 challenge to the European Commission's move to block a Spanish tax scheme benefiting Spanish shipbuilders and their suppliers.

  • June 26, 2024

    Repatriation Tax Ruling May Sway State Wealth Tax Debates

    The U.S. Supreme Court's upholding of the federal repatriation tax could indirectly affect state tax policy discussions, including by influencing consideration of wealth taxes and encouraging states to keep potential due process issues in mind when enacting tax legislation.

  • June 26, 2024

    Pepsi's Royalty Tax Liability Overturned By Australian Panel

    A Federal Court of Australia judge incorrectly ruled that payments for beverage concentrate between Pepsi subsidiaries in Australia and Singapore included the license to use Pepsi's trademark and so triggered royalty taxes, a panel of the court ruled Wednesday. 

  • June 26, 2024

    Fed. Circ. Denies Contractor's $37M Tax Reimbursement Bid

    A U.S. State Department armed security contractor is not entitled to $37 million in reimbursement tied to tax payments to the Afghan government because the contractor's parent company, not the company itself, incurred the costs associated with the payments, the Federal Circuit said Wednesday.

  • June 26, 2024

    Medical Device Co. To Pay $935K Atty Fees In Tax Fraud Suit

    A medical equipment company's leaders will pay $935,000 in attorney fees to investors' counsel after mediating a settlement in a proposed class action alleging the company breached fiduciary duty in failing to disclose its former CEO's involvement in a tax fraud dispute with Denmark.

  • June 26, 2024

    Kenya President Backs Off Finance Bill After Fatal Protests

    Kenyan President William Ruto said Wednesday that he will withdraw a controversial finance bill that included tax hikes that inspired mass protests, including storming the country's Parliament building leaving multiple people dead, according to local news reports.

  • June 26, 2024

    EU Justice Head Loses Bid To Lead Human Rights Group

    The European Union's justice commissioner failed in his bid to lead a European human rights organization and returned Wednesday from his leave of absence for the remaining four months of his term as commissioner.

  • June 26, 2024

    EU State Auditors Must Respect Tax Incentives, Lawyer Says

    European Union countries need to make sure that their tax authorities are supporting incentive programs, such as those related to research and development, rather than interpreting laws in inconsistent ways, a tax lawyer said Wednesday.

  • June 26, 2024

    Irish Pick New Finance Minister After Former Heads To EU

    Ireland picked a current junior minister as its new finance minister, the ministry confirmed to Law360 on Wednesday, one day after the government nominated the outgoing finance minister to serve on the next European Commission. 

  • June 25, 2024

    US Needs To Broaden Tax Base, Increase Rates, OECD Says

    The United States' debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio is the highest it's been since World War II, necessitating a wide range of tax changes to both expand the tax base and increase rates to alleviate fiscal pressures, the OECD said Tuesday.

  • June 25, 2024

    Pharma Co. Teva To Pay Israel $750M In Tax Debt Settlement

    Israel-based multinational Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. reached an agreement with the Israel Tax Authority to settle 12 years' worth of pending tax litigation by paying $750 million over the course of five years, the company said Tuesday.

  • June 25, 2024

    Asia, Pacific Tax-To-GDP Ratio Returns To Pre-COVID Level

    Tax revenue in Asia and the Pacific rebounded to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 thanks to boosts in tourism and commodity prices, but the region's average tax-to-gross domestic product ratio is still lagging behind the average OECD ratio, the group said Tuesday.

  • June 25, 2024

    Pension Plans Can't Escape $2B Danish Tax Fraud Dispute

    Two U.S. pension plans made an "extremely strained" contention that Denmark's tax administrator waited too long to accuse them of participating in a $2.1 billion fraud scheme, a New York federal judge said in declining to toss the case.

  • June 25, 2024

    Hong Kong, Armenia Reach Double-Tax Treaty Deal

    Hong Kong signed an agreement with Armenia on a treaty to prevent double taxation as part of a larger goal to establish such treaties with countries participating in China's Belt and Road global infrastructure project, Hong Kong's Inland Revenue Department said.

  • June 25, 2024

    Ex-DOJ Atty Among New Trio At Chamberlain Hrdlicka

    Chamberlain Hrdlicka White Williams & Aughtry has strengthened its tax controversy and litigation practice with the addition of three attorneys in Atlanta, including a former senior trial attorney in the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice for more than three decades.

  • June 25, 2024

    J&J Counsel Urges OECD To Ease Burdens Of Global Min. Tax

    Counsel for Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday urged the OECD and government officials working on the Pillar Two global minimum corporate tax to consider more permanent safe harbor provisions to reduce the compliance burdens associated with the levy.

  • June 25, 2024

    Global Tax Overhaul Won't Squash Competition, US Rep. Says

    The global tax overhaul designed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development won't eliminate countries competing for companies' investments, a U.S. House lawmaker said Tuesday.

  • June 25, 2024

    EU Leaders To Include Tax Revamp In 5-Year Plan, Draft Says

    A targeted makeover of the tax systems in European Union countries will be part of the bloc's top priorities for the next five years as it aims to improve business financing to sharpen its competitiveness, a draft document suggested.

Expert Analysis

  • Senate Credit Suisse Report Puts Attention On Banks, Trusts

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    The Senate Finance Committee's recent finding that Credit Suisse violated a plea agreement struck over its role in enabling offshore tax evasion has important ramifications for banks and trusts, including how they onboard, document and report on transactions relevant to U.S. reporting requirements, say Will Barry and Ian Herbert at Miller & Chevalier.

  • Seeking IRS Accountability For Faulty Microcaptive Notice

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    Like the taxpayers in Standard Insurances v. U.S. seeking to expand earlier wins in microcaptive insurance cases that limit IRS use of improperly obtained information, others should consider ways to hold the agency accountable and provide incentive for it to follow the law going forward, says Joshua Smeltzer at Gray Reed.

  • Biden Admin. Proposals Both Encourage And Thwart EV Adoption

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    While the Biden administration has been aggressively focused on promoting electric vehicles from the start, its recently issued guidance on EV tax credits and its restrictive new auto emissions proposal create a sense of implementation whiplash that may frustrate manufacturers and consumers, says Levi McAllister at Morgan Lewis.

  • The Key Issues Keeping Transfer Pricing A Top Tax Concern

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    Several challenges preventing a global economic reemergence from the pandemic era are making practitioners reevaluate commonly used transfer pricing models, and embrace new technologies and ways of doing business, say Farnaz Amini and Sophia Castro Jurado at Marcum.

  • Curtailing Offshore Tax-Advantaged Investment In China

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    The U.S. government's plans to establish a new outbound investment regime hold the potential to arrest Chinese companies' increasing use of offshore, tax-advantaged locations to raise capital, says David Plotinsky at Morgan Lewis.

  • Cos. May Want To Wait Out US-EU Green Incentives Fight

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    As the European Union considers measures to compete with the Inflation Reduction Act's incentives for U.S. production of clean tech, and EU and U.S. officials discuss a possible compromise, companies in the green sector should consider taking a wait-and-see approach to investment decisions, says Todd Thacker at Goldberg Segalla.

  • India's Budget Proposals May Ease Entry For Certain Sectors

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    India’s recently released budget includes proposals to facilitate doing business in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City and moderate thousands of compliance requirements, opening up new opportunities for foreign businesses in the digital infrastructure, manufacturing and renewable energy sectors, say Mukesh Butani and Seema Kejriwal at BMR Legal.

  • High Court Ax Of Atty-Client Privilege Case Deepens Split

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    The U.S. Supreme Court's recent dismissal of In re: Grand Jury as improvidently granted maintains a three-way circuit split on the application of attorney-client privilege to multipurpose communications, although the justices have at least shown a desire to address it, say Trey Bourn and Thomas DiStanislao at Butler Snow.

  • US-India Advance Pricing Resolutions Should Reassure Cos.

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    The United States' and India's tax authorities' recent resolution of a significant number of pending advance pricing agreements should reduce taxpayer uncertainty, reassure companies of the nations' good working relationship and improve India's investment environment, say Miller Williams and Caroline Setliffe at Eversheds Sutherland.

  • Stock Buyback Excise Tax Guidance A Mixed Bag For SPACs

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    Recent IRS guidance on the new stock repurchase excise tax includes a welcome exception for publicly traded special-purpose acquisition companies but does not exclude redemptions in connection with a de-SPAC transaction, and further guidance is needed to clarify ambiguities around the exception's application, say Olga Bogush and Evgeny Magidenko at ArentFox Schiff.

  • The IRS' APA Rulemaking Journey: There And Back Again

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    Attorneys at Dentons examine recent challenges in which taxpayers successfully argued Internal Revenue Service rulemaking was invalid under the Administrative Procedure Act, how tax exceptionalism and U.S. Supreme Court regulatory deference prompted such challenges, and similar challenges the agency will likely face following this line of cases.

  • ECJ Fiat Ruling Sets Clear Boundaries For EU State Aid Law

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    The European Court of Justice's recent landmark decision in Fiat v. Commission limiting the commission’s attempts to circumvent the lack of EU powers in the area of tax law has important implications in EU state aid law and beyond, say Andreas Reindl and Pietro Stella at Van Bael.

  • Unpacking The Interim Guidance On New Stock Buyback Tax

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    The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service's recent notice on applying the newly effective excise tax on stock repurchases provides much-needed clarity on the tax's scope, which is much broader than anticipated given its underlying policy rationale, say attorneys at Eversheds Sutherland.

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