Avocado Roundup is a quick morning review of top tax, legal, and climate news stories. It’s written by humans.
- Irish Finance Minister Michael McGrath tried to reassure members of his own party that the country’s businesses won’t be hurt by the US delay in signing a core piece of the OECD two-pillar plan for reforming the international framework for taxing big companies. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently announced that the US is not ready to sign the OECD-brokered Multilateral Convention to Implement Amount A of Pillar One. The treaty would create a mechanism for reallocating rights to tax giant multinationals from investment hubs, where multinationals park large amounts of their profits, to market jurisdictions, where the companies make most of their sales revenues. (Irish Independent)
- A university professor in Germany proposes in a paper that for some jurisdictions a “safe harbor domestic minimum top-up tax” could be a viable and less costly alternative to setting up a qualified domestic minimum top-up tax for implementing OECD Pillar Two rules on minimum taxation of big companies. (SSRN)
- France’s Constitutional Council is set to hear, in January 2024, a constitutional question raised by labor unions’ challenge to a transfer pricing calculation used by Procter & Gamble. They contend the company improperly used transfer pricing to reduce its profits in France, and thus funds available to the company’s legally required employee-profit sharing reserve. (Les Echos)
Kenya's Plan to Tax Tourists
- Kenyan lawmakers accused tax officials of harassing tourists at the airport after the country’s revenue authority issued a directive to tax foreign tourists’ personal items worth $500 or more, whether new or used. (The East African)
- Colombia began applying a tax on “ultra-processed” foods and sugary drinks as a measure to fight obesity. The levy starts at 10% this year and is set to climb gradually to 20% by 2025. (Food Ingredients 1st) (DAP)
Laterals, Moves, Promotions
- Latham & Watkins announced it promoted 34 associates to partner, including nine who advise on tax, across its offices worldwide, effective Jan. 1, 2024. It promoted 48 associates to counsel worldwide. (Lw.com)
- French law firm BDO Avocats hired two experienced tax attorneys as partners in Paris, including Céline Pasquier as head of its transfer pricing and international tax department. She arrives from
CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats, while Emilie Dumez arrives from Lead Up Avocats. (Le Monde du Droit) - Baker Donelson said tax attorney Charles Goldberg returned to the firm as of counsel in its Nashville office. Goldberg, who was earlier of counsel at Baker Donelson in Jackson, Mississippi, arrives recently from the Nashville office of wealth-management firm Truist Wealth, where he was senior vice president and senior trust adviser. (BakerDonelson.com)
- Spencer Fane added tax, trusts and estates lawyer Samuel DiPietro as an associate in Phoenix, Arizona. He arrives from Husch Blackwell. (SpencerFane.com)
