At his inaugural speech on January 20, President Trump espoused two economic principles: "Buy American and Hire American". What else can the rest of the world expect? Immediately after the inauguration, the White House website provided a few more insights (https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-foreign-policy) "The world must know that we do not go abroad in ... Read More

Wouldn't it be nice if you could complain about tax authority bureaucracy. Now you can, if the complaints relate to failed attempts to apply tax treaty dispute resolution procedures. But hurry, there isn't much time to file the complaint. The Background – BEPS: On October 5, 2015 the OECD published a comprehensive ... Read More

The European Commission announced on August 30, 2016 that that Ireland granted undue tax benefits of up to €13 billion to Apple (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2923_en.htm).  The Commission said this is illegal under EU state aid rules, because it allowed Apple to pay substantially less tax than other businesses. Ireland must now recover ... Read More

The OECD has issued revised draft guidance on profit splits within multinational groups for transfer pricing purposes (BEPS Actions 8-10, Revised Guidance on Profit Splits July 4 – September 5, 2016). Israel joined the OECD in 2010. Why is this important? We live in a global village, but customers in each country ... Read More

Multinational groups, large and small, are now overhauling their international tax planning from top to bottom, due to BEPS, hopefully without getting into the Panama Papers. What is BEPS? On October 5, 2015 the OECD published a final comprehensive package of measures aimed at BEPS – Base Erosion Profit Shifting. Countries around ... Read More

Who sets the fiscal policy here? If you said the Finance Ministry, go to the back of the class. And if you said the Bank of Israel, take some extra classes. In practice, there is a new sheriff in town, in Israel and over 100 other countries…the OECD and its ... Read More

Leon Harris It's been a long hot summer. Now it seems we are in for a warm winter taxwise, thanks to the OECD. Western governments asked the OECD to recommend ways of preventing offshore tax evasion committed by corporations and individuals. Over the last year the OECD has duly issued a ... Read More

Israel is not sufficiently proactive in detecting and investigating foreign bribery, with no prosecutions over the past 7 years, despite 14 allegations of foreign bribery involving Israeli individuals or companies. The OECD Working Group on Bribery is, however, encouraged by the recently-opened investigations, and will pay close attention to how ... Read More