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The European Commission last week decided that tax breaks in Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands constitute state aid

There seems to be no escape for the big accounting firms in the US. Just after their fears were alleviated by the final wording of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which seemingly guarantees that they can continue providing tax services to audit clients, they face another attack. This time, the US government is cracking down on tax shelters

According to news reports, Bosnia is overhauling its customs system in the hope of finding millions of dollars of unpaid excise taxes. Paddy Ashdown, Bosnia-Herzegovina's High Commissioner, reportedly said that the county was losing KM1.4 billion ($770 million) a year to custom and tax fraud.

India's prime minister wants to introduce a tax on international currency transactions in order to protect developing economies. Atal Behari Vajpayee called for the tax after blaming currency speculators for the economic crises in Mexico, Southeast Asia, Brazil and Argentina. He reportedly claimed that it would help protect weak economies from capital volatility, enhance investor confidence through greater stability and generate developmental resources.

White & Case has hired two Ernst & Young tax advisers for its Slovakian tax group

The European Commission has dropped its state aid probe into an Irish tax scheme and given the Belgium and Dutch governments more time to phase out tax schemes it says are incompatible with state aid rules

The OECD's Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is meeting in Paris this week to discuss new methods of terrorist financing and money laundering as well as reviewing developments in non-cooperative countries.

The Czech Ministry of Finance and the country's Chamber of Tax Advisers are testing electronic VAT returns. They are looking at issuing, filing, receiving and recording the forms electronically with the system due to be fully active in March this year.

UK accounting firm BDO Stoy Hayward, has predicted that its big four rivals could lose hundreds of millions of pounds as a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. BDO has carried out research on the amount of fees at risk and estimates that in the UK alone, the big four could lose roughly £67 million ($108 million) purely on tax work while £252 million could be at risk in areas including valuation and forensic accounting work. Its research concluded that in total nearly £700 million in fees could be affected. While much of this will go to other big four firms, BDO is optimistic that mid-tier accounting firms could also benefit.

The European Commission (EC) has launched an attack on discriminatory tax systems against foreign pension funds in six member states