Tax Authority

The Canada Revenue Authority (CRA) is auditing over 750 taxpayers with suspected links to offshore "tax havens" and investigating 20 cases of Tax Evasion, The Government has said.

The introduction of new UK penalties for "enablers" of defeated Tax Avoidance schemes must not prevent taxpayers from accessing "honest, impartial advice on the law," John Cullinane, Tax Policy Director of the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT), has said.

After a trial two months ago (reported in Eye 1418), two former employees of global accountancy firm PwC, Antoine Deltour and Raphael Halet, were convicted for revealing details of tax avoidance orchestrated by their firm on behalf of hundreds of multinationals, including Amazon, Pepsi, Vodafone and HSBC �� all with the complicity of Luxembourg’s tax authorities under Juncker’s finance ministry. By allowing multinationals to dodge millions (and in some cases billions) of tax back home, Luxembourg grubbily trousered handsome fees.

Barcelona football star Lionel Messi and his father will appeal against a Spanish court decision to sentence them each to 21 months in jail for tax fraud, the player's lawyers say. Argentine Messi, aged 29, was also fined €2m euros (£1.7m; $2.2m) by the court in Barcelona. In addition to the prison term, Messi's father, Jorge, was fined €1.5m for defrauding Spain of €4.1m in 2007-09.

Major corruption scandals have recently emerged at the State Revenue Service (VID) and the Police. The Prime Minister of Latvia Māris Kučinskis in the interview does not exclude that possible dishonest employees of VID and the Police are "covered form the top". He also asserts that this situation could be the outcome of the lack of control and, possibly, as we are a small nation, we know each other and want to mercy.

According to the published research information in January of large cash resources, loans and regular donations of the State Revenue Service (VID) Financial Police and the investigators of Custom administration and their executives in their recent declarations have submitted an information where they have lost more than a half of their previous savings in cash.

State Revenue Service (VID) has developed a list of the most corruptive positions that includes 1788 sensitive places.

Employees suspected about offenses in the State Revenue Service (VID) will not be transfered to other positions but brought to justice. In order to catch those kind of employees, there is developed special system in VID that monitors employees and actions of their relatives.

In the case of probable bribe acceptance and misuse of public position the Financial Police Internal Security Division of the State Revenue Service (VID) has detained three employees of VID. The offenses are related to the recovery work of VID.

There have been tens of raids and four suspected persons in the criminal investigation of transactions between family members of the former State Revenue Service (VID) Financial police officer Roberts Dirnēns. As reported, Dirnēns and relatives of his brother Kaspars Aleksandrovs own significant real estates and expensive cars. The origin of money resources is unknown and there is a suspicion that it has been gained in the schemes of money laundering and afterwards legalized by buying properties. Dirnēns and his brother assert that they have inherited almost a half of million euros and a number of properties from their deceased mother.