Search results for

The government announced several measures to relieve the financial pressure due to the adverse SARS effects. One way is to provide salary taxpayers with a tax rebate equal to half of the salaries tax paid for the year of assessment 2001/02 subject to a ceiling of HK$3,000 ($384). Taxpayers are not required to apply for the refunds. The Inland Revenue Department (IRD) will automatically work out their rebate amounts, and send the cheques to them by post. About 1.3 million refund cheques will be issued, and taxpayers will receive the refund from July 10-31 2003.

In a recent judgement (CIT v Vijay Ship Breaking Corporation and others [2003] 181 CTR 134), the Gujarat High Court has held that an Indian buyer is required to withhold tax from the usance interest paid to foreign suppliers.

Since late 2001 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has made training materials developed by its advance pricing agreement programme for internal use available to the public on its website. These materials are frequently consulted and relied upon by transfer pricing practitioners, who see them as an indicator of the IRS's thinking on emerging or difficult issues. Because they have no formal standing as legal authority, they can be revised or updated relatively quickly.

On April 23 2003 the European Commission partly approved the proposed new rules for Belgian coordination centres (BCC). These new rules are designed to replace the old BCC regime, which the European Commission ordered on February 17 2003 to be phased out by the end of 2010.

Under the current circumstances that major banks tighten the loan assessments, it is anticipated that bad-debt loans will increase. Banks may use legal procedures, loan sales, or debt forgiveness as the primary methods to write off loans for taking tax deductions.

Under Italian law, the sale of a going concern is outside the scope of value-added tax (VAT) - consistently with the EU VAT Directives - and is subject to registration tax, irrespective of the assets that are part thereof.

The 2003 Mexican tax reform restricted indirect foreign tax credits to only first-tier companies. This meant that any Mexican company that had an investment outside Mexico through a foreign-holding company would be unable to credit the foreign taxes paid by the second-tier company. Clearly, this had a significant negative effect on many Mexican multinationals or other transnational companies that used Mexico as a springboard for their Latin American investment.

CFC taxation

US manufacturing multinational Ferro has hired Thomas Gannon as corporate vice president and CFO. Gannon will be responsible for overall financial management including accounting, tax and budgeting. Before joining Ferro he worked at Riverwood International, Rockwell International, Pilkington and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Ferro produces performance materials for industrial coatings and performance chemicals and has operations in 20 countries.

Sed Crest speaks with tax directors at leading multinationals in Europe to find out which firms are providing the best tax advice and how their tax advice needs are changing