Under the wording of Art. 22 of the Business Freedom Act of 2 July 2004 in force until the end of 2016, in Poland a business making or accepting a payment worth in each instance over EUR 15,000 is required to route the payment through a bank account. The law imposes certain consequences for failure to comply with this requirement, primarily under the Foreign Exchange Law of 27 July 2002 and the Act on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism of 16 November 2000 ...
On 23 November 2016, the Serbian Parliament adopted amendments to the Criminal Code. Changes made include, among other, criminal offence of tax avoidance. Prosecution of tax avoidance was a matter of much controversy in the recent practice, and some of the changes made by the latest amendments are aimed to address these controversies. Though generally welcome, the scope of changes made are unlikely to bring significant improvements in the prosecution of tax avoidance ...
Under the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), large employers (generally those with 50 or more full-time employees or full-time equivalents) must report annually to the IRS information about the health coverage offered to their full-time employees during the prior year. Employers also must provide copies of the reports to their full-time employees ...
The December/January issue of the International Financial Law Review (IFLR) included an international briefing article entitled “Philippines: Competition Law Updates”. The article was contributed by SyCipLaw partners Franco Aristotle G. Larcina and Arlene M. Maneja. The article discussed the new merger form issued by the Philippine Competition Commission on August 31, 2016. Read the article online at the IFLR website ...
As part of its continuing efforts to develop legislation regarding the taxation of non-Israeli persons providing digital services in Israel, the Israel Tax Authority recently published a proposed amendment to the Value Added Tax Law (the “Proposed Amendment”) ...
On January 1, 2017, most public works projects in California will be subject to new procedural requirements applicable to claims from contractors ...
U.S. taxpayers with unreported foreign accounts or assets are in an increasingly precarious position. The IRS has repeatedly announced that it is devoting resources to finding and penalizing taxpayers who do not disclose such offshore accounts and assets. In addition, many U.S. taxpayers, both domestic and international, are facing intense pressure from foreign banks to disclose their U.S. taxpayer status or close their accounts ...
The Serbian Parliament has recently adopted amendments to the Criminal Code. The amendments include a significant overhaul of the legal framework for white collar crimes, touching upon the rules relevant for antitrust enforcement as well. While the Serbian Criminal Code previously penalized antitrust infringements spearheaded by the responsible managers, the relevant provision was relatively vague and targeted chiefly dominance abuse ...
Effective January 1, 2017, new rules will govern the taxation of mutual fund corporations structured as ?switch funds?. Investors switching between funds will no longer be able to do so without incurring taxable capital gains. This article summarizes the impact of such changes. Description of "switch funds" under the current regime In Canada, most mutual funds are structured as trusts and some are structured as corporations (referred to as ?corporate class funds?) ...
After a remarkable year in both merger control and antitrust, the Serbian Competition Commission (the "Commission") is already starting to look ahead. The announcements made on the Commission's website during November and December of this year suggest that the Commission's focus in the year ahead will be directed at several industries in particular. Firstly, the Commission published on its website the Report on the Sectorial Analysis of Aftermarkets ...
The Public-Private Partnership delivery model (?PPP? or ?P3?) is now well established in Canada, where more than 177 of such projects were closed between 1993 and 2015 (source: InfraAmericas). The great majority thereof (166) have been closed since 2004, and the current trend indicates the number of projects is on the rise ...
Creation of a Canadian infrastructure bank On October 20, 2016, the Advisory Council on Economic Growth published its report entitled "Unleashing Productivity Through Infrastructure". One of the report's recommendations is to create a Canadian Infrastructure Development Bank whose objective would be to deliver projects with an aggregate value of more than $200 billion over 10 years, while at the same time minimizing the use of government budgets ...
A federal appeals court has rejected two challenges to the environmental review of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's (Metro's) planned subway expansion in Downtown Los Angeles. The "Regional Connector" project, approved in 2012, will create a three-station, underground link through Downtown that will allow passengers to travel from points on the Metro Gold Line to the Blue and Expo lines without having to transfer trains ...
The October issue of the International Financial Law Review (IFLR) included an international briefing article entitled “Mining Developments”. The article was contributed by SyCipLaw partner Aaron Roi B. Riturban ...
Introduction In the context of trusts situated in foreign participating jurisdictions, the Common Reporting Standards (“CRS”) require the trustees to identify the settlor, beneficiaries and other natural persons exercising ultimate effective control (including through a chain of ownership) and report the necessary financial information in respect of those persons to the relevant foreign revenue authority ...
The 2017 Law on Financial Management has yet to be formally enacted in Cambodia however its content has already been disseminated among most tax professionals and the press so with that in mind we have put together what we believe are the salient points of the draft Law on Financial Management (“the Draft Law”) for your reference. The Draft Law has been rubber stamped by the Council of Ministers and when enacted the changes should take effect from 1 January 2017 ...
Trade mark law may be contained in statutes, but judges are the ones who interpret the statutes. Judges are also the ones who eventually decide whether one trade mark is confusingly similar to another. It is these factors that make the “Question the Trade Mark Judges” event that recently took place at University College London so fascinating for anyone interested in trade marks ...
In the case of Claremont Library Development Company (Pty) Ltd v The Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service, the Tax Court recently considered the question of whether crediting a loan account constitutes “payment” of full consideration for purposes of the Value-Added Tax Act, No 89 of 1991 (the “VAT Act”) ...
Section 103(2) of the Income Tax Act, 58 of 1962 empowers the Commissioner (the “Commissioner”) for the South African Revenue Service (“SARS”) to disallow the setting off of an assessed loss or balance of an assessed loss against the company’s income if the relevant requirements are met ...
The October 2016 issue of the Asian Legal Business (ALB) includes a regional update article entitled “New Implementing Rules for Philippine Data Privacy Act”, contributed by SyCipLaw partner Rose Marie M. King-Dominguez. The article enumerated and discussed the implementing rules and regulations of the Philippine Data Privacy Act of 2012. It is located on page 11. Read the full ALB October 2016 issue on the ALB website ...
Maxim Alekseyev, ALRUD Senior Partner, and Kira Egorova, ALRUD Of Counsel, prepared an article for Trusts&Estates journal “Family Offices in Russia”. Trust&Estates is one of the most reputable journals for wealth management professionals serving the needs of high-net-worth clients and their families ...
The Serbian Minister of Finance issued the Rulebook on the Manner and Procedure of Delivering and the Content of the Tax Administration's Notification on Commencement or Finalization of Tax Audit ("Rulebook"). Under the Rulebook, the Tax Administration ("TA") will start to deliver notifications on initiated tax audits of the legal entities and entrepreneurs to the Business Registers Agency ("BRA"). Notifications will be delivered once a day ...
The July/August issue of the International Financial Law Review (IFLR) included an international briefing article entitled “Promoting Foreign Investment”. The article was contributed by SyCipLaw partner Carina C. Laforteza and associate Lito Paolo T. Martin II. The article discussed the enactment of Republic Act No. 10881, which was set to make the Philippine sa more attractive destination for foreign investors in the financing industry ...
