Essential reading: As governor, Romney picked winners and losers, no taxes for Lagarde, and more
Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.
* As governor, Romney picked winners and losers of his own. Andy Sullivan – Reuters. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s June 2006 announcement that drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb was moving into his state served as a signature accomplishment. The new facility came with a price tag: Romney and other state officials agreed to $67 million in tax breaks and other inducements to ensure the New York-based company picked Massachusetts over rival states like North Carolina. Romney backed tax breaks for film makers and biotech and medical-device manufacturers. His administration promoted venture capital-style funds that extended loans to start-up companies, some of which subsequently went out of business. Link
* Christine Lagarde, scourge of tax evaders, pays no tax. Kim Willsher – The Guardian. Christine Lagarde, the IMF boss who caused international outrage after she suggested in an interview with the Guardian on Friday that beleaguered Greeks might do well to pay their taxes, pays no taxes, it has emerged. As she is an official of an international institution, her salary of $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year is not subject to any taxes. Link
* Anti-tax crusader assails report on Republican shift. Patrick Temple-West – Reuters. Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, scourge of any and all tax increases, said on Tuesday that a news report questioning the vitality of his “no new taxes” pledge – a vow taken by many Republican politicians – is overblown. Republicans who have not signed the pledge may be in congressional races they are unlikely to win anyway, while other candidates have rules against signing pledges, he said. Link
* Japan PM, Ozawa still apart on tax, opposition deal beckons. Tetsushi Kajimoto – Reuters. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda edged closer on Wednesday to a possible deal with the opposition to push through his plan to double the sales tax, after party heavyweight Ichiro Ozawa refused to support his signature initiative. Former finance minister Noda has pledged to bring the plan to a vote in the current session of parliament that ends on June 21, and requires masterful maneuvering to get it passed. Link
* ‘Pasty tax’ u-turn signals uncertainty for UK business. Ainsley Thomson – The Wall Street Journal. Following Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s u-turn, the meat-filled pastry and parked mobile homes have come to symbolize a government that is prepared to reverse a budget measure if it proves unpopular enough. There is also a significant negative side. The u-turn risks undermining one of the central conditions the annual budget statement is meant to foster: certainty. Link
Essential reading: Mall landlords battle tax, Groupon shifts board amid accounting issues, and more
Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.
* Mall landlords engage in taxing battle. Kris Hudson and Stu Woo – The Wall Street Journal. U.S. shopping-center owners, smarting from high vacancies partly due to the rise in Internet shopping, are throwing their weight behind federal bills aimed at requiring online retailers to collect sales tax. At the same time, some of the biggest mall owners also are gaining traction in their efforts in individual states to squeeze sales tax out of the world’s largest online retailer—Amazon.com Inc. Seven states have reached pacts with Amazon to collect sales tax, with Nevada and Texas joining the list last week. Five more are in talks on similar deals. Link
* Groupon replaces Schultz, Efrusy on board. Alistair Barr – Reuters. Groupon Inc (GRPN.O) appointed two new directors on Monday and said Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) Chief Executive Howard Schultz and venture capitalist Kevin Efrusy were leaving the board as the company tries to address criticism of its accounting practices. The world’s largest daily deals company came under renewed fire in March after revising its fourth-quarter financial results and admitting to a “material weakness” in its financial statements, months after its high-profile IPO. Groupon’s audit committee was criticized because some members are busy executives who may not have enough time to devote to fixing the company’s accounting problems. Link
Sales tax rates stay high for many, revenue vital for cities, states
When it comes to sales tax three things matter: location, location, location.
Depending on where you live you may be paying 10 percent sales tax on your purchases, or zero. The tax could be marginal to your community’s fiscal health, or absolutely vital.
States rely on taxes rung up at the register for about one-third of their revenue on average, but as Cate Long pointed out in a recent MuniLand post, that rate varies widely depending on where you are.
State tax revenues up in 2011, but not booming
Tax collections rose in all 50 states last year, according to the U.S. Census bureau, as our colleague Lisa Lambert reported Thursday.
“The nationwide increases in state government tax revenue are an indication of the stabilization of revenues for state governments,” Lisa Blumerman, chief of the Governments Division at the Census, was quoted as saying.
Stable but not booming, according to a Rockefeller Institute analysis of that data, which finds overall tax revenue is still down significantly from pre-recession levels in 2008. Source: Rockefeller Institute analysis of Census Bureau data.
Essential tax and accounting reading: Obama wants Romney tax returns, battling over big oil breaks, Japan’s mega sales tax, and more
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
Essential tax and accounting reading:GOP tax reform, Apple’s cash moves, Irish increasingly anti-tax, EU financial transaction tax and more
Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.
* Republican budget plan seeks to play up tax reform. David Lawder, Donna Smith and Richard Cowan – Reuters. A much-anticipated budget plan due on Tuesday from Republicans in the House of Representatives includes sweeping tax reforms that cut rates and pare down individual income tax brackets from six to two – 10 percent and 25 percent. The plan, which aims to deflect potential fallout from controversial Medicare reforms ahead of November elections, also would nearly eliminate taxes on overseas profits and reduce the domestic corporate tax rate to 25 percent. Even though the plan has almost no chance of becoming law, Republican lawmakers believe that focusing on tax reform will draw a stark contrast with Democratic President Barack Obama’s budget plan and be popular with voters. Link
Essential tax and accounting reading: European carbon and tycoon taxes face headwinds, better outlook for Japanese sales tax, audit red flags, and more
Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.
* Whistleblower Joseph Insinga suing IRS for not being paid a reward. Lisa Rein – The Washington Post. Joseph A. Insinga was the ultimate whistleblower. The former executive with a Dutch bank says he divulged to the Internal Revenue Service details about how for years his employer helped U.S. companies dodge taxes. Now Insinga is taking tax authorities to court for failing to give him a reward that he says he is owed by the federal government. Insinga filed a whistleblower claim with the IRS in 2007, a year after Congress passed a law to help the government uncover tax cheats by encouraging informants to come forward. Those with inside information could receive up to 15 to 30 percent of any taxes, fines, penalties and interest the IRS collected from a taxpayer who was illegally sheltering taxes, usually a corporation. Insinga says he is entitled to a portion of the money the IRS collected from the taxpayers he exposed. He’s confident that at least one company, and maybe more, was forced to pay taxes based on his information. He had alleged that Rabobank Group, where he worked as an executive for more than a decade, helped seven companies avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes through offshore partnerships and other corporate schemes. Link
* Delay EU carbon levy, says air industry. Peter Marsh, Joshua Chaffin and Simon Rabinovitch – The Financial Times. Seven of Europe’s leading aviation companies have joined forces to warn that the European Union’s plans to charge for carbon pollution are jeopardizing 2,000 jobs and billions of dollars of orders from China. Airbus and six large European airlines said the plan to bring global airlines into the EU emissions trading scheme for carbon dioxide, which the industry has steadfastly opposed, is creating an “intolerable” threat to the European aviation industry by opening up the possibility of trade battles with China, the US and Russia. The EU’s plan to regulate the output of carbon dioxide, as part of the effort to combat global warming, has stirred concern in the European aviation industry. Airbus – which employs more than 50,000 people across Europe – argues the proposals will damage competitiveness at a time of economic weakness, wants the EU to “put on hold” the extension of the scheme to airlines until a global plan for regulating carbon emissions by airlines can be agreed. Link
Essential tax and accounting reading: U.S. corporate income taxes hit a low, British tax shelters, Japan’s sales tax, taxing wealth around the world, and more
Welcome to the top tax and accounting headlines from Reuters and other sources.
* U.S. corporate tax rates hit 10-year low. Telis Demos – The Financial Times. The effective tax rate paid by large U.S. public companies fell to its lowest in a decade in the fourth quarter last year as an increasing amount of revenue was generated outside of the country. According to figures compiled by Morgan Stanley, the unweighted average tax rate paid by the largest 1,500 U.S. public companies by market value in the fourth quarter was 31.9 percent of pre-tax income. About 100 companies are yet to report for the quarter. That puts the period on track for the lowest average in any quarter since 2001 and off sharply from the 35.4 per cent paid a year ago. Link
* Companies assess risks of tax planning. Vanessa Houlder – The Financial Times. Businesses are scrambling to assess the reputational risks of tax planning, after the closure of two “highly abusive” schemes designed by Barclays demonstrated the increasing public scrutiny of big companies’ tax affairs. The Treasury moved aggressively last week to block the bank from exploiting a loophole that could have cost the exchequer 500 million pounds ($792.80 million), marking the latest in a series of high-profile corporate tax disputes. Experts say the cases show how tax has joined executive pay at the forefront of debate over “responsible capitalism,” putting pressure on both the government and companies to demonstrate that businesses are paying their fair share. Link
Tax clips from the Web: Oklahoma mulls cutting income tax, how to spend your refund and more
Oklahoma wants to abolish its state income tax. The plan, according to Governor Mary Fallin, is to achieve one of the lowest income tax rates in the country by eliminating some tax credits and closing loopholes in the tax code. Other taxes would not be increased, according to The Oklahoman.
“Our goal is to transform Oklahoma into the best place to do business, the best place to live, find a quality job, raise a family and retire in all of the United States. Not just better than average, but the very best,” state Representative Leslie Osborn said. (Cue Rodgers and Hammerstein music)
Across the United States, the average state sales tax rate has dropped, according to William Barrett at Forbes.
