(The Irish Times): The Irish ambassador in Washington has written to a US committee there countering claims that Ireland is a tax haven, but his efforts have been refuted by two of its top senators. Michael Collins, in a letter to Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said that Ireland’s tax system is set out in statute and there was no possibility of individual special tax rates being negotiated for companies. In a recent hearing the subcommittee examined the tax affairs of Apple and heard claims that it had negotiated a deal with the Irish government years ago that allowed it pay tax rates well below the Irish 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate.

(BBC): Andorra is to introduce a tax on personal income for the first time as it faces pressure from the its European neighbours to tackle tax evasion. Antoni Marti, the head of the Andorran government, told French President Francois Hollande that he will introduce a bill before 30 June. The principality will "gradually meet international tax standards", according to the office of the French president. There is currently no income tax applied to individuals or corporations. EU finance ministers have agreed to start talks with Andorra - along with Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and San Marino - on swapping bank account information. 

(The Telelgraph): Speaking at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting, HSBC chairman Douglas Flint revealed that the use of offshore tax havens was being reviewed in light of increased public scrutiny of the issue. He conceded that the use of these financial centres had got a “bad name”. “Given that it started getting a flavour to it, we need to reflect very carefully and scrutinise anything we’re involved with, anything that our customers are involved with, and decide whether that is appropriate going forward,” he said. Mr Flint added: “I would think generally these options of being involved with tax havens will reduce.” HSBC has been accused of helping customers avoid tax through Switzerland and Jersey, as well as other offshore financial centres.

(CNS Business): This year's HSBC Expat Explorer Survey, which opened 1 May, will close on 31 May, so anyone wanting to participate has just two days to do so. A global survey of expats and the largest of its kind, the Expat Explorer survey gives expats a voice on aspects of life and work overseas including economic outlook, lifestyle and raising a family abroad, as well as emerging expat hotspots and global workforce trends. The bank is keen to hear from expats from the Cayman Islands to complete the survey so expats can see how it compares to other places in the world when the results are out later this year.

(The Guardian): Eric Schmidt, Google's executive chairman, has continued to defend the company's tax affairs, insisting it would comply with British law if it was changed and claiming to be perplexed by the debate. Schmidt said Google had "a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders" that prevented the internet company from paying more tax abroad. However, he said: "It's not a debate. You pay the taxes." Google has come in for escalating public criticism, including unusually frank words from senior politicians, since the House of Commons public accounts committee took it to task this month over figures that revealed payments of £3.4m in tax on £3.2bn of sales to customers in Britain last year, with sales technically accounted for under the low-tax regime of Ireland.

(CNS Business): The director general of the UK’s business organisaiton the CBI has said that British companies need to be more transparent about their tax affairs and explain why they pay what they do. Offering support for the international work of the OECD, John Cridland said that international tax rules had lost pace with globalization. The CBI has now issued a new statement of principles directing companies to be more responsible about tax management to improve transparency and promote understanding among the wider public.

(The Telegraph): More than 40 multinational companies have inquired about relocating their headquarters to the UK because of the cuts in corporation tax. Steve Varley, the UK chairman of Ernst & Young, revealed that the accountancy firm knew of the significant number of firms seeking to relocate from countries such as the USA, as well as from the Netherlands, Switzerland and Ireland. The high figure will be a boost to George Osborne, the Chancellor, who has made Britain's lower rates of corporation tax a centrepiece of Government policy. The advertising giant, WPP, recently announced that it would move back to the UK from its present headquarters in Dublin.

(NYT): Europe's effort to crack down on tax havens gained momentum during the weekend as the number of countries agreeing to share more bank information doubled. Miroslav Kalousek, the Czech finance minister, pledged to join the push for more automatic exchanges of bank records that already had the backing of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. "The surge in member states' appetite for progress and action in the fight against evasion is extremely welcome," Algirdas Semeta, the Union's commissioner for taxation, said Saturday after two days of meetings in which ministers discussed adoption of Europe-wide laws modeled on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

(BBC): Luxembourg has said it will ease the secrecy surrounding its banks. It said it would implement rules on the automatic exchange of bank account information with its European Union partners from 2015. Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said Luxembourg would introduce the reforms in two years, in line with the EU Savings Directive. The rules of the Directive are aimed at creating greater transparency and minimising tax evasion. Calls for a crackdown on bank secrecy have been increasing, as governments seek to raise more taxes to support their finances.
"We can introduce [the rules] without any danger from January 2015," Mr Juncker said.

(Reuters): Moody's Investors Service on Wednesday warned it may downgrade Bermuda's Aa2 sovereign credit rating, citing prospects for further increases in already elevated government debt levels. "In addition, the island's economy remains in recession, making efforts to correct the fiscal deterioration more difficult," Moody's said in a statement. Moody's said its caution on Bermuda stems from a government debt to gross domestic product ratio rising to an estimated 28.1 percent by the end of this year from 5.9 percent in the 2007-08 period. However, it says a newly elected government's first budget "projects a large deficit that will raise this (debt to GDP) ratio further in the coming year to well over 30 percent."

(Bloomberg): Headquartered in a former Rothschild chateau in an affluent Parisian neighbourhood, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is best known for earnest conferences on economic and social policy. With little outside attention, it also plays a pivotal role enabling global corporations such as Google Inc., Hewlett- Packard Co. and Amazon.com Inc. to dodge taxes by shifting profits into offshore subsidiaries, costing the US and Europe more than $100 billion a year. OECD officials “have been digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole by blindly pursuing a mistaken approach that allows multinationals to avoid taxes,” said Sol Picciotto, an emeritus professor of law at the UK’s Lancaster University.

(CNS Business):  The chairman of a London based PR agency claims it was the aggressive campaign pursued by his firm on behalf of the local business community in Turks and Caicos Islands that resulted in a “dramatic” U-turn by the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office over its controversial plans to impose VAT on the overseas territory.  Jack Irvine, the head of Media House International, said he was contacted eight months ago by Clive Stanbrook QC, who is based in TCI, about the local business community’s concerns about the introduction of VAT without researching the implications or allowing time for consultation.

(CNS Business): The international rating agency Moody's has downgraded the UK's credit rating one notch from top-grade Aaa to Aa1 because of slow growth and a rising debt burden. Moody's said Friday that a "high and rising debt burden" as well as subdued growth were behind the drop as they were believed to  be taking a toll on the UK’s economic fortunes. The agency also demoted the Bank of England from Aaa to Aa1. Earlier this month Moody's affirmed the Cayman Islands at Aa3 with a stable outlook, citing a relatively low debt burden and high income levels. In a statement, the rating agency also highlighted the country's narrow economy, "susceptible to weather-related shocks," and its strong institutional framework.

(CNS Business): As Turks and Caicos continues to do battle with the UK to overturn the implementation of value added tax (VAT) in that country and Cayman continues to hold out against a direct sales tax, the Bahamas has included the introduction of VAT to its 2014 budget. From 1 July government will be imposing a 15% rate of sales tax to offset reductions in hotel occupancy tax and import duty as a result of the country joining the World Trade Organization. A broad range of goods and services will be subject to the tax, which is described as a consolidation of the country’s finances. Around 3,800 local businesses will now have to file and pay the tax they collect from customers on a monthly basis.

(New York Times): The college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement, albeit an expensive one, for getting even the lowest-level job. Consider the 45-person law firm of Busch, Slipakoff & Schuh here in Atlanta, a place that has seen tremendous growth in the college-educated population. Like other employers across the country, the firm hires only people with a bachelor’s degree, even for jobs that do not require college-level skills. This prerequisite applies to everyone, including the receptionist, paralegals, administrative assistants and file clerks. Even the office “runner” — the in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and the office — went to a four-year school.