Avocado Roundup is a quick review of top tax, legal, and climate news stories. It’s written by humans.
- The draft 2024 budget text that the French government rammed through the National Assembly Wednesday in a first reading would completely exempt certain international sports federations from paying French corporate tax and other levies starting in 2024, when France will host the summer Olympics. The measure, which would also exempt employees of these federations from paying French income tax for five years, in particular aims to lure the Zurich-based world football federation FIFA to move its headquarters to Paris, according to reports. (Les Echos) (Economie Matin) (RTL)
- The government’s budget text includes several anti-tax-fraud measures, such as tightening transfer pricing documentation rules and increasing the tax authority’s power to investigate fraud. It would reduce a tax break for owners of Airbnb-type housing, in an effort to boost the country’s supply of housing. The text drops an opposition amendment that would have extended a temporary tax on the oil refinery sector, but it kept one that extends a tax on electricity producers. (BFM Business)
- For the government’s tax-side text of the draft budget to move forward, the government has to prevail in votes over no-confidence motions filed by opposition parties because of its use of a constitutional mechanism to push its text budget through the Assembly without a vote in the first reading. (LinkedIn)
Tech Giants “May Have” Avoided Taxes in the UK
- UK-based nonprofit Tax Watch said its analyses suggest that “complex tax structures” used by seven US tech giants may have enabled those companies to avoid paying an estimated combined total of 2 billion pounds ($2.43 billion) in UK taxes in 2021. But it said a lack of country-by country reporting data from the companies made it impossible to verify its estimates. (Tax Watch)
- Journalists in India say the government is using tax and terror investigations to muzzle the press. (Wall Street Journal)
Laterals, Moves, Promotions
- Defense litigation law firm Wilson Elser said it opened a new office in Portland, Oregon, for which it hired four lawyers from Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith as partners. It hired two lawyers from the same firm as partners in its Seattle office. (WilsonElser.com)
