4 ms·
This is the real story, its buried at the end of the article. > The UK government is also in the process of introducing the Diverted Profit Tax, announced by t
by chollida1 12y ago
This is the real story, its buried at the end of the article.
> The UK government is also in the process of introducing the Diverted Profit Tax, announced by the chancellor, George Osborne in the Autumn Statement.
> The tax aims to counter the use of "aggressive tax planning techniques" to divert profits from the UK to low tax jurisdictions.
> Profits made after 1 April 2015, and diverted to other countries, will be taxed at 25%.
This is a pretty watershed moment for world wide business tax strategies. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
I would hate to be one of the big accounting firms, or an employee of one, right now. Inter-country tax laws are about to get alot more complex and my guess is that at least of of the big accounting firms get bankrupted in the next few years due to this.
Current tax law is kind of like trying to follow the bible, or quran, to the letter of the law. There are so many inconsistencies and just plain old conflicting rules that you just can't do it.
EDIT To clarify, I'm pretty convinced, mostly from analysts I've talked to, that sooner or later a PWC or ther accounting firm will give a company tax advice that a country doesn't care for and they will get taken to the woodshed by that country. I'm not even referring to outright illegal activity like Arthur Anderson and Enron.
So yes, more money in the future due to increased tax regulation but a heck of alot more risk due to it as well.
You have to realize that Arthur Anderson was taken down because a relatively small team of auditors was corrupt.
PWC has 10,000 partners and almost 200,000 employees. It just takes a team of 50 to mess up and the firm can be gone.
- riffraff 12y ago> Inter-country tax laws are about to get alot more complex and my guess is that at least of of the big accounting firms get bankrupted in the next few years due to this. could you expand? My feeling would be that with increasing complexity, big accounting firms stand only to make more money.
- aetherson 12y agoIt's a mixed blessing. More complexity = more billable hours for accountants, but also = more liability if they screw up.
- jes 12y agoI think your comment is a good one. But I find myself wondering, if a company like PWC is also "Too big to fail." In this day and age, I have little trust in very large organizations, as I see them in league with politicians and bureaucrats. Edit: Change "too" to "to" in "Too big to fail."
- bobcostas55 12y agoThe Diverted Profit Tax won't stand. It overrides double taxation treaties and breaks EU law. Not to mention it's extremely fuzzy and filled with subjective judgments on whether profits are "diverted" or not. It's basically just populist grandstanding.