Insights

Tax affairs used to be a largely private matter between company and tax authority, with very little public disclosure beyond what was available in the report and accounts. Today, the veil of confidentiality is being stripped away.

A recent case involving a Singapore investment bank serves as a reminder of the complexity of tax planning on cross-border transactions and interpretation of tax treaties by local tax authorities.

New technology can free up tax professionals to take on a strategically influential role and generate the analytical insights and real-time information to support this. So how can a tax function take advantage of the changes ahead?

The structure of the VAT rates in China have been simplified into three brackets.

Singapore is amongst the earliest non OECD countries to adopt and consistently implement the OECD BEPS Actions. This signing of the Multilateral Convention is a further commitment towards ensuring that profits should be attributable to the jurisdiction in which the activities occur that give rise to the profits.

As most of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan is made up of best practice recommendations rather than ‘red line’ requirements, it was always going to be applied electively and in different ways from country to country.

Singapore Budget 2017 observations and analysis: Moving Forward Together seminar, hosted on Wednesday 8 March 2017.

As of next year, beginning 1 January 2018 a non-established of services not solely subject to the place of recipient principle in Switzerland and Liechtenstein has to register for VAT, unless the non-established business can prove that its worldwide annual revenue from supplies is less than CHF 100,000. This revenue threshold was previously limited to the territory of Switzerland and Liechtenstein and is newly extended to worldwide scope.

Finance Minister, Mr Heng Swee Keat delivered the 2017 Singapore Budget yesterday afternoon. We’ve attached a Budget Summary to help you understand the initiatives that have been announced and how we believe it will impact businesses and individuals.

Emerging markets are at the forefront of the global shift from direct to indirect taxation. Reduced corporate tax rates in many countries and new or enhanced value-added-tax (VAT) or goods-and-services-tax (GST) are causing the shift.

Across a number of countries, the way internationally mobile employees are taxed is being shaken-up. This follows the G20/OECD-led Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan recommendations set out over a year ago.

A flurry of sign-ups in the first half of 2016 took the number of countries agreeing to introduce the minimum BEPS standards1, including country-by-country (CbC) reporting, beyond 80.

Our latest global survey found that businesses biggest concerns stemming from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan are additional administrative burdens and cyber security. With the demand of information that will be required and the sharing expected across local and foreign governments, is this a big surprise? Probably not, but our survey surprising found that nearly one year after release 78% of businesses have not changed their planning approach to taxes.

With more than 80 countries now having agreed to adopt at least the minimum elements of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) Action Plan, there’s no getting around BEPS.

Grant Thornton has prepared a high-level analysis, from a VAT, GST and Customs Duties perspective, of the potential impact of Brexit on supply chains involving the UK and other EU countries. The analysis assumes that the UK will not form part of the Customs or VAT territories of the EU and the analysis could differ depending on precise incoterms and transport arrangements.

The profitability of a business is directly impacted by how its supply chain is structured. As a business moves through its own life cycle the supply chain will also evolve, for example, as procurement, manufacturing and distribution strategies change.