Tax Avoidance
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Tax Avoidance
Tax avoidance is the legal usage of the tax regime in a single territory to one's own advantage to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. A tax shelter is one type of tax avoidance, and tax havens are jurisdictions that facilitate reduced taxes. Tax avoidance should not be confused with tax evasion, which is illegal. Forms of tax avoidance that use legal tax laws in ways not necessarily intended by the government are often criticized in the court of public opinion and by journalists. Many corporations and businesses that take part in the practice experience a backlash from their active customers or online. Conversely, benefiting from tax laws in ways that were intended by governments is sometimes referred to as tax planning. The World Bank's World Development Report 2019 on the future of work supports increased government efforts to curb tax avoidance as part of a new social contract focused on human capital investments and expanded social p ...
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Tax Shelter
Tax shelters are any method of reducing taxable income resulting in a reduction of the payments to tax collecting entities, including state and federal governments. The methodology can vary depending on local and international tax laws. Types of tax shelters Some tax shelters are questionable or even illegal: *Offshore companies. Due to differing tax rates and legislation in each country, tax benefits can be exploited. Example: If Import Co. buys $1 of goods from India and sells for $3, Import Co. will pay tax on $2 of taxable income. However, tax benefits can be exploited if Import Co. is to set up an offshore subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands to buy the same goods for $1, sell the goods to Import Co. for $3 and sell it again in the domestic market for $3. This allows Import Co. to report taxable income of $0 (because it was purchased for $3 and sold for $3), thus paying no tax. While the subsidiary will have to pay tax on $2, the tax is payable to the tax authority of Brit ...
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Legal Doctrine
A legal doctrine is a framework, set of rules, Procedural law, procedural steps, or Test (law), test, often established through precedent in the common law, through which judgments can be determined in a given legal case. A doctrine comes about when a judge makes a ruling where a process is outlined and applied, and allows for it to be Case law, equally applied to like cases. When enough judges make use of the process, it may become established as the ''de facto'' method of deciding like situations. Examples Examples of legal doctrines include: See also * Constitutionalism * Constitutional economics * Concept * Rule according to higher law * Legal fiction * Legal precedent * ''Ex aequo et bono'' References External links * *Pierre Schlag and Amy J. Griffin, "How to do Things with Legal Doctrine" (University of Chicago Press 2020) * Emerson H. Tiller and Frank B. Cross,What is Legal Doctrine?
" ''Northwestern University Law Review'', Vol. 100:1, 2006. Legal doctrines ...
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Tax Haven
A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or national), and tax compliance refers to policy actions and individual behaviour aimed at ensuring that taxpayers are paying the right amount of tax at the right time and securing the correct tax allowances and tax reliefs. The first known taxation took place in Ancient Egypt around 3000–2800 BC. A failure to pay in a timely manner ( non-compliance), along with evasion of or resistance to taxation, is punishable by law. Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labor equivalent. Most countries have a tax system in place, in order to pay for public, common societal, or agreed national needs and for the functions of government. Some levy a flat percentage rate of taxation on personal annual income, but mo ...
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Tax Residence
The criteria for residence for tax purposes vary considerably from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, and "residence" can be different for other, non-tax purposes. For individuals, physical presence in a jurisdiction is the main test. Some jurisdictions also determine residency of an individual by reference to a variety of other factors, such as the ownership of a home or availability of accommodation, family, and financial interests. For companies, some jurisdictions determine the residence of a corporation based on its place of incorporation. Other jurisdictions determine the residence of a corporation by reference to its place of management. Some jurisdictions use both a place-of-incorporation test and a place-of-management test. Domicile is, in common law jurisdictions, a different legal concept to residence, though the place of residence and the place of domicile would typically be the same. The criteria for residence in double taxation treaties may be different from those of do ...
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Offshore Trust
An offshore trust is a conventional trust that is formed under the laws of an offshore jurisdiction. Generally offshore trusts are similar in nature and effect to their onshore counterparts; they involve a settlor transferring (or 'settling') assets (the 'trust property') on the trustees to manage for the benefit of a person, class or persons (the 'beneficiaries') or, occasionally, an abstract purpose. However, a number of offshore jurisdictions have modified their laws to make their jurisdictions more attractive to settlors forming offshore structures as trusts. Liechtenstein, a civil jurisdiction which is sometimes considered to be offshore, has artificially imported the trust concept from common law jurisdictions by statute. Uses of offshore trusts Official statistics on trusts are difficult to come by as in most offshore jurisdictions (and in most onshore jurisdictions), trusts are not required to be registered, however, it is thought that the most common use of offshore trus ...
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Offshore Company
The term "offshore company" or “offshore corporation” is used in at least two distinct and different ways. An offshore company may be a reference to: * a company, group or sometimes a division thereof, which engages in offshoring business processes. * International business companies (IBC) or other types of legal entities, which are incorporated under the laws of a jurisdiction, that prohibit local economic activities. The former use (companies formed in offshore jurisdictions) is probably the more common usage of the term. In isolated instances, the term can also be used in reference to companies with offshore oil and gas operations. Companies from offshore jurisdictions In relation to companies and similar entities which are incorporated in offshore jurisdictions, the use of both the words “offshore” and "company" can be varied in application. The extent to which a jurisdiction is regarded as offshore is often a question of perception and degree. Classic tax haven c ...
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Offshore Financial Centre
An offshore financial centre (OFC) is defined as a "country or jurisdiction that provides financial services to nonresidents on a scale that is incommensurate with the size and the financing of its domestic economy." "Offshore" does not refer to the location of the OFC, since many Financial Stability Forum– IMF OFCs, such as Delaware, South Dakota, Singapore, Luxembourg and Hong Kong, are located "onshore", but to the fact that the largest users of the OFC are non-resident, i.e. "offshore". The IMF lists OFCs as a third class of financial centre, with international financial centres (IFCs), and regional financial centres (RFCs); there is overlap (e.g. Singapore is an RFC and an OFC). The Caribbean, including the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda, has several major OFCs, facilitating many billions of dollars worth of trade and investment globally. During April–June 2000, the Financial Stability Forum–International Monetary Fund produced the first l ...
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Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank. He is also a former member and chairman of the (US president's) Council of Economic Advisers. He is known for his support of Georgist public finance theory and for his critical view of the management of globalization, of ''laissez-faire'' economists (whom he calls " free-market fundamentalists"), and of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. He has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 2001, and received the university's highest academic rank ( ...
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Tax Noncompliance
Tax noncompliance (informally tax avoision) is a range of activities that are unfavorable to a government's tax system. This may include tax avoidance, which is tax reduction by legal means, and tax evasion which is the criminal non-payment of tax liabilities. The use of the term "noncompliance" is used differently by different authors. Its most general use describes non-compliant behaviors with respect to different institutional rules resulting in what Edgar L. Feige calls unobserved economies. Non-compliance with fiscal rules of taxation gives rise to unreported income and a tax gap that Feige estimates to be in the neighborhood of $500 billion annually for the United States. In the United States, the use of the term 'noncompliance' often refers only to illegal misreporting. Laws known as a General Anti-Avoidance Rule (GAAR) statutes which prohibit "tax aggressive" avoidance have been passed in several developed countries including the United States (since 2010), Canada, Au ...
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Trust (property)
A trust is a legal relationship in which the holder of a right gives it to another person or entity who must keep and use it solely for another's benefit. In the Anglo-American common law, the party who entrusts the right is known as the " settlor", the party to whom the right is entrusted is known as the "trustee", the party for whose benefit the property is entrusted is known as the "beneficiary", and the entrusted property itself is known as the "corpus" or "trust property". A ''testamentary trust'' is created by a will and arises after the death of the settlor. An ''inter vivos trust'' is created during the settlor's lifetime by a trust instrument. A trust may be revocable or irrevocable; an irrevocable trust can be "broken" (revoked) only by a judicial proceeding. The trustee is the legal owner of the property in trust, as fiduciary for the beneficiary or beneficiaries who is/are the equitable owner(s) of the trust property. Trustees thus have a fiduciary duty to manage th ...
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US Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." The court holds the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The court may decide cases having political overtones, but has ruled that it does not have power to decide non-justiciable political questions. Established by Article Three of the United States Consti ...
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Like-kind Exchange
A like-kind exchange under United States tax law, also known as a 1031 exchange, is a transaction or series of transactions that allows for the disposal of an asset and the acquisition of another replacement asset without generating a current tax liability from the sale of the first asset. A like-kind exchange can involve the exchange of one business for another business, one real estate investment property for another real estate investment property, livestock for qualifying livestock, and exchanges of other qualifying assets. Like-kind exchanges have been characterized as tax breaks or "tax loopholes". U.S. Tax Code section 1031 This kind of transaction is also called a " 1031 exchange", because Internal Revenue Code section 1031 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code allows owners of certain kinds of assets to defer capital gains taxes on any exchange of like-kind properties. Both the relinquished property and the acquired property must be like-kind, and must be held for business ...
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