EU crackdown on corporate tax cheats weak & almost useless

Editor: Vladimir Bajic | Tactical Investor

Tax Cheats: EU crackdown

Let’s quickly look at the top article of the week before getting into the current story.

Buybacks appear to be nearing a crescendo, with total U.S. stock repurchase announcements crossing the $1 trillion mark in mid-December for the first time, according to Michael Schoonover, the portfolio manager of the Catalyst Buyback Strategy fund (ticker: BUYIX). “There’s been a significant pickup in recent weeks,” with markets in a downdraft, he adds. Announcements reached $1.08 trillion, with nearly half concentrated in 19 companies, which account for $460 billion of the total. Some of those are listed in the nearby table. Despite the record-setting buyback authorization levels, 2018 has been an unusual year in that fewer companies are accounting for the total buybacks, he says. Take this as an early warning that should the media jackasses start pushing another B.S story, instead of panicking, one should break out of a bottle of champagne, and as the masses panic calmly sip on that champagne and build a list of strong stocks one always wanted to purchase. For those allergic to work, the option is simple; sit back and relax, for we always view crash type events as opportune moments when the trend is positive. Market update Feb 28, 2019 Investing For Dummies: Forever QE & Stock Market Bull 2019

I study publication of the European Union (EU) tax haven blacklist on December 5, 2017, to examine whether and how the use of recognized tax havens affects firm value. I find that the tax haven naming and shaming by the EU was associated with a negative stock price reaction of firms with tax haven subsidiaries. Overall, publication of the blacklist erased $56 billion in market capitalization among the implicated firms. The largest reaction was for those tax havens, for which it was not foreseeable that they would be included in the blacklist. Retail firms experienced a larger decrease in share price than firms in other industries, which is consistent with a potential consumer backlash.

Also more tax-aggressive firms faced more negative returns, which suggests that investors expect firms might be audited or fined for past or overly aggressive tax avoidance. The negative reaction was less pronounced in countries with low levels of investor protection and weakly governed firms with substantial conflicts of interest between principals and shareholders. This is consistent with increased scrutiny and potential for countermeasures associated with the blacklist, which reduce opportunities for managerial wealth diversion. After months of screening of global tax policies, on December 5, 2017, the European Union (EU) finance ministers blacklisted 17 countries for refusing to cooperate with the EU’s decade-long crackdown on tax havens.Footnote1 The EU referred to the blacklist as list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, since the listed countries failed to make sufficient commitments in response to the EU’s concerns. Full Story

Tax Cheats: EU crackdown

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