Tango with the Tax Man

Multinationals Find Loopholes Galore in Europe

© Federal Ministry of Finance

Large multinationals, many of them based in the United States, are masters at avoiding taxes on profits made abroad. Apple, for example, paid just $100 million in taxes in 2010 on overseas profits of $13 billion. But Germany would like to put a stop to the practice, and is finding some influential support.

Read more at the english edition of Spiegel Online.


BY SVEN BÖLL, MARKUS DETTMER, FRANK DOHMEN, CHRISTOPH PAULY, and CHRISTIAN REIERMANN

Taxation Planning via Cyprus

Use Cyprus as a base for international tax planning!

Today with the tightened global economic crisis, businesses try to preserve growth, and savings is no doubt one major solution.

Many international business companies use Cyprus as a base for international tax planning. Investors also use Cyprus as a vehicle in order to maximize after tax profit on global investments. Such income, arising from investment deeds through Cyprus, shall benefit from the provisions of Cyprus tax system and double taxation avoidiance treaties network (DTT). Cyprus maintains Double Taxation Avoidance Treaties with more than 40 countries.

Taxation Sytem

The Cyprus tax system offers to investors and companies several benefits together with a very low corporation tax (10%) for tax-resident companies. BUT income from dividends, appreciation of shares and bonds and from the purchase and sale of the aforementioned or from the sales of participations is not taxable.
80 % of the income from Intellectual Property are deductable as deemed expenses. The remaining 20 % of income from Intellectual Property is taxable by the usual corporate tax of 12,5 %, thus resulting in an effective taxe rate of 2,5 % of the whole income from Intellectual Property only.
Royalties and licenses for the use of rights outside of Cyprus are not subject to withholding tax.

www.taxsavingcorp.com

Financial Stability Board reports to G20 on progress of financial regulatory reforms

The Chairman of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) reported to the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors today on progress in the financial regulatory reform programme.

In connection with this, the FSB is publishing today:

• a letter by the FSB Chair to the G20, sent ahead of their meeting, reporting on the progress being made in the following priority reform areas: (i) building resilient financial institutions; (ii) ending “too big to fail”; (iii) strengthening the oversight and regulation of shadow banking activities; (iv) completing OTC derivatives and other reforms to create core continuous markets; and (v) implementing agreed G20 reforms in a timely and consistent manner;
• a report on progress in extending the framework for Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions (G-SIFIs) to domestic systemically important banks;
• a report on progress in strengthening the oversight and regulation of the shadow banking system;
• a joint report from the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board on their progress in converging their standards, together with a report on enhancements to the governance of the IASB.

At today’s meeting the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors reaffirmed their commitment to common global standards by pursuing the financial regulatory reform agenda according to their agreed timetable in an internationally consistent and non-discriminatory manner.

The reports are available on the FSB’s website, www.financialstabilityboard.org/

Strengthening the Oversight and Regulation of Shadow Banking

Progress Report to G20 Ministers and Governors

At the Cannes Summit in November 2011, the G20 Leaders agreed to strengthen the oversight

and regulation of the shadow banking system, and endorsed the Financial Stability Board (FSB)’s initial recommendations with a work plan to further develop them in the course of

2012.

The G20 Leaders also asked the FSB to report its progress for review at the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in April 2012.

Direct link to FSB's Progress Report to G20 Ministers and Governors