Tax Break

Around 50 percent of Irish homeowners have boycotted a new tax. Here, an empty and unsold housing development in the village of Keshcarrigan, County Leitrim. REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.

*U.S. regulator accuses RBC of massive trading scheme. Alexandra Alper – Reuters. The U.S. futures regulator accused the Royal Bank of Canada of running a “trading scheme of massive proportion” to gain lucrative Canadian tax benefits. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s civil lawsuit alleges RBC employees created and managed a “wash trading” strategy in which they improperly coordinated to buy and sell stock futures without taking a position in the market. RBC declined to comment on whether the trades in question were structured to realize Canadian tax credits, as alleged in the lawsuit. Link

*SEC probes Groupon. Shayndi Rice and Jean Eaglesham – The Wall Street Journal. The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining Groupon Inc’s revision of its first set of financial results as a public company, according to a person familiar with the situation. Groupon has hired a second accounting firm, KPMG, in addition to its current accountant Ernst & Young. KPMG’s role is to make Groupon compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley, federal regulations around accounting and disclosures of public companies. In addition, Groupon plans to hire more accounting and finance staff, said a person familiar with the matter. Link

*Obama to assail Republican budget plan as ‘social Darwinism.’ David Nakamura – The Washington Post. President Barack Obama on Tuesday plans to accuse Republicans of trying to impose a “radical vision” on the nation through a budget plan that would create a form of “social Darwinism” by pitting the poor against the wealthy. In prepared remarks, Obama aims to further accentuate the differences between the parties, using the Paul Ryan budget plan as a metaphor for a GOP vision for a country that is “antithetical to our entire history” as a land that promises the path to upward mobility for the middle class. Link

*Global business groups warn India over new tax plan. Henry Foy and Matthias Williams – Reuters. International trade groups representing more than 250,000 companies have told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a letter that his government’s new retrospective tax proposals have led foreign businesses to reconsider their investments in the country. The union federal budget last month outlined a proposal to enable the tax authorities to make retroactive claims on overseas corporate deals and bring in new anti-avoidance measures, moves that have been criticized for further denting investor sentiment. On Monday the UK’s finance minister George Osborne also raised his concerns over the issue with his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee. Link

U.S. President Barack Obama walks past a pumpjack, New Mexico, March 21, 2012. REUTERS/Jason Reed

Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.

* Obama campaign seeks Romney tax returns. Mark Maremont – The Wall Street Journal. President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign called on Republican front-runner Mitt Romney to release his tax returns dating back to the 1980s, to see if they contain information about an uncommon investment arrangement at his former private-equity firm that may have helped swell his individual retirement account. The request follows a page-one article in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that recounted how employees at the firm, Bain Capital, were allowed to invest their retirement money in companies the firm acquired, including investing through a special share class that could skyrocket in value in successful deals. Romney’s IRA was valued at between $20.7 million and $101.6 million as of August, according to his financial disclosures. Link

* GOP blocks Obama’s effort to end tax breaks for big oil. Zachary Goldfarb and Brad Plumer – The Washington Post. President Obama on Thursday called on Congress to end tax breaks for oil companies in a populist speech that sought to turn the blame for gas prices nearing $4 a gallon back onto his Republican critics. In fiery, campaign-style remarks delivered from the Rose Garden, Obama told lawmakers that they can “stand with big oil companies, or they can stand with the American people.” Senate Democrats followed by forcing a vote to end tax cuts for the five largest oil companies, which Republicans resoundingly defeated. Link

* Germany to agree to tougher Swiss tax deal-paper. Emma Thomasson – Reuters. Germany is set to agree a revised deal with Switzerland on secret offshore accounts that involves higher rates of taxes than originally planned to meet objections from the opposition, a Swiss newspaper reported on Thursday. Citing unnamed sources, the Tages-Anzeiger daily said German state premiers meeting in Berlin on Thursday should sign off on the deal after the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens apparently accepted Swiss concessions to tighten the agreement. Link

* Panel clears Ernst & Young unit in Olympus scandal. Kana Inagaki – The Wall Street Journal. Closing another chapter in probes into the scandal that rocked Olympus Corp. last year, an independent panel of lawyers and professors on Thursday cleared Ernst & Young ShinNihon LLC of legal responsibility in its audit of the company’s accounts. But the panel also called on the accounting industry to take measures that go beyond existing legal obligations to better spot potential fraud. Ernst & Young ShinNihon commissioned the four-member panel in December after a separate panel appointed by Olympus’ board raised questions over the hand-over process when Ernst & Young took over the auditing of the company from KPMG AZSA LLC in 2009. KPMG AZSA audited Olympus’ accounts from 1974 to 2009. Link

* Cameron hits back over claims of elitism. George Parker – The Financial Times. British Prime Minister David Cameron has attempted to dispel Labour claims that he leads an elitist “out of touch” government, when he declared his love of Cornish pasties, one of the hot foods that will be taxed more under budget value-added tax rules. The comments came after George Osborne announced a Budget measure on takeaway food, putting a 20 per cent VAT charge on food “sold above ambient temperatures” – immediately named a “pasty tax”. Labour has revelled in the government’s discomfort. Link

U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. REUTERS/Molly Riley

To be or not to be a tax?

That is the question, wrote Donna Smith of Reuters, in a March 14 piece on the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that will test the validity of President Barack Obama’s controversial healthcare system overhaul.

The central issue in the arguments is the money that Americans will have to pay starting in 2014 to the Internal Revenue Service if they fail to obtain medical insurance.

Though the money is going to the IRS, the Obama administration has gone to great lengths to term it a penalty, not a tax.

Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.

 
* Big oil, bigger taxes. The Wall Street Journal editorial. President Obama says he wants to end subsidies for what he calls “the fuel of the past,” but lucky for him oil and gas will be the fuels of the future too. His budget-deficit blowout would be so much worse without Big Oil, because the truth is that this industry is subsidizing the government. Much, much worse, actually. The federal Energy Information Administration reports that the industry paid some $35.7 billion in corporate income taxes in 2009, the latest year for which data are available. That alone is about 10 percent of non-defense discretionary spending—and it would cover a lot of Solyndras. That figure also doesn’t count excise taxes, state taxes and rents, royalties, fees and bonus payments. All told, the government rakes in $86 million from oil and gas every day—far more than from any other business. Link

* Most Americans back “Buffett tax”:Reuters/Ipsos. Kevin Drawbaugh – Reuters. Nearly two-thirds of Americans support imposing a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on those who earn $1 million or more a year, according to Reuters/Ipsos poll results released on Tuesday. The poll showed that 64 percent of those surveyed favored a “Buffett tax” as proposed by the Obama administration and named for multibillionaire investor Warren Buffett, who backs it. The poll said that support for the Buffett tax was strongest among Democrats, at 76 percent, but also significant among Republicans, with 49 percent of them viewing it favorably. Link  

* Senate defeats tax break for natural gas trucks. Roberta Rampton – Reuters. A bipartisan proposal to provide tax incentives for natural gas vehicles was defeated in a Senate vote on Tuesday, but a key backer of the bill said it will be revised and reintroduced to address concerns from industry. The five-year plan was designed to spur purchases of long-haul trucks and commercial vehicles that can run on cheap and abundant U.S. natural gas. The amendment to the Senate’s highway bill needed 60 votes to pass, but was rejected in a 51-47 vote after conservative groups panned it as an unnecessary subsidy. Link  

Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston has zeroed in this week on President Obama’s proposal to apply a lower tax rate to manufacturers.  It’s an idea that may sound appealing at first glance, but will, Johnston predicts, end up more about defining the word “manufacturing” than supporting true manufacturing and manufacturing jobs.

In the video below Johnston explains his thesis. His full argument can be found in this column . And over at Double Taxation, Toni Nitti  lends his support to the argument, writing :
“even code reform based on good intentions comes with the price of complexity and confusion.”

Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Tax reform is coming! 

Many people say that momentum is building to revamp the tax code, but the pace can seem glacial on Capitol Hill.

Nearly everyone agrees the tax code needs a rewrite but they also agree it won’t happen in an election year.

In an effort to lay the groundwork, congressional leaders held another set of major tax reform hearings this week, dragging experts into Capitol Hill hearing rooms to discuss something that’s less likely to hit DC than a blizzard in March.

A Rick Santorum campaign video screens at Mitt Romney's South Carolina primary rally, January 21, 2012. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.

* Obama, Romney offer contrasting tax plans. Zachary Goldfarb and Philip Rucker – The Washington Post. President Barack Obama and Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney offered competing proposals for how the government should tax citizens and companies, previewing the ideological clash over taxes that is likely to be at the forefront of the general-election campaign. Obama released a long-awaited plan to overhaul the country’s corporate tax code that plays directly to his base, following his call this month for significant tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans. A short time later Romney unveiled a series of deep cuts in personal and corporate income tax rates, the kind of reductions that have become a tenet of Republican economic thinking. The former Massachusetts governor proposed reducing the rates for individual taxpayers by a fifth, meaning that the highest earners would pay a top rate of 28 percent, compared with 35 percent today. He also suggested taxing corporate profits at a rate of 25 percent. Link

* Obama urges corporate tax cut, closing loopholes. Kim Dixon and Rachelle Younglai – Reuters. President Obama made an opening offer in what could be a long negotiation with corporate America on Wednesday, putting forward his first detailed plan to cut the corporate tax rate. Though it has little chance of becoming law in an election year with Congress paralyzed over fiscal issues, the plan shows Obama’s intent to favor domestic over offshore manufacturing and to broaden the tax base by closing corporate tax loopholes. Of the 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones industrial average, 19 told shareholders that their effective tax rate for their 2011 fiscal years (mostly ending Dec. 31) was lower than Obama’s proposed new tax rate. Link

Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.

 * Obama to propose corporate tax rate of 28 percent. Kim Dixon – Reuters. The Obama administration will propose cutting the top tax rate for corporations to 28 percent, and pay for it by eliminating dozens of tax loopholes companies now use to lower their rates, a senior administration official said. Most analysts doubt that the convoluted tax system could be revamped by a deeply divided Congress in an election year, but the announcement is certain to fuel debate in the run-up to November’s elections. The plan, over a year in the making, is President Barack Obama’s first official foray into reform of the tax code, which most experts believe badly needs a revamp after years of being loaded up with special provisions. The centerpiece is a cut in the top corporate rate – now at 35 percent, among the highest in the industrialized world. That will appeal to businesses, which gripe that the current U.S. rate puts them at a competitive disadvantage. Controversy will erupt when officials lay out which “loopholes” they want to cut. The proposal makes a special carve-out for manufacturing – cutting that tax rate to 25 percent – and proposes a minimum tax on profits earned in low tax countries. Link 

* Romney says wants ‘flatter, simpler’ tax system. Steve Holland – Reuters. Battling to come back in Michigan, Republican Mitt Romney said on Tuesday he wants a tax system that is flatter and simpler as he laid the groundwork for a major economic address coming up in days. Romney is expected to release an updated tax plan on Wednesday ahead of the Republican candidates’ debate in Phoenix. “I want to see taxes flatter, and fairer and simpler, because I want our tax policies to encourage growth,” Romney said on Tuesday. Link

* Heralding end of ‘dark times,’ Christie offers budget that is bigger and cuts taxes. Kate Zernike – The New York Times. After two years of enforcing austerity, Gov. Chris Christie argued on Tuesday that New Jersey could afford to have it all, presenting a budget he said would cut income taxes by 10 percent at the same time it gave money to schools, provided for the poor and met the state’s pension obligations. The governor proclaimed that “we have left the dark times” as he proposed a $32 billion budget, a 3.7 percent increase over last year’s spending. While still less than the budget of 2008, when the economy faltered, it would be the largest of his tenure. Democrats argued that the income tax cut, which would be phased in over three years, was aimed more at presidential primary voters in Iowa than wallets in New Jersey. Link  

Wyoming multimillionaire Foster Friess, whose super PAC strongly supported Rick Santorum’s candidacy, argues the best kind of taxation would be none at all.  Government should step back and let the wealthy “self-tax” and so choose where to spend their money rather than letting the government do so, he says.

Citing philanthropic efforts by Bill Gates and others, Friess praises them not only as the creators of jobs and great products, but also as people who embrace the idea of helping their fellow man.

In this video interview with Chrystia Freeland of Reuters, he urges the country to “honor and uplift the one percent.”