Hashtag: #AmericanPoliticians
Abramoff Details Ties To Bermuda Firm
Disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff once bragged he was in contact with former White House political strategist Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation which wanted to avoid incurring some US taxes and to continue receiving federal contracts According to a 2005 written statement by President George W. Bush’s one-time... Read more of this article
Florida Lawmakers Protest Neal Bill
Republican lawmakers from Florida have joined with the Association of Bermuda Insurers & Reinsurers to renew concerns about the potential high cost of raising US taxes on offshore insurers. In a letter to the leadership of the Congressional Ways and Means Committee, nine members of the Florida Congressional delegation asked the tax-writing panel... Read more of this article
Governor Saw JFK Days Before Killing
At the conclusion of the December, 1961 Bermuda summit meeting between US President John F. Kennedy and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, Governor Major General Sir Julian Gascoigne officiated at a brief Government House ceremony. To commemorate the Bermuda talks Sir Julian presented both leaders with specially commissioned Royal Worcester porcelain... Read more of this article
‘Strong Objections’ Raised To Bermuda Bill
The Coalition for Competitive Insurance Rates [CCIR]– the Washington lobby group backed by the island’s re/insurance industry — has strongly objected to legislation aimed at closing what’s been called “The Bermuda Loophole” in the US tax code. Massachusetts Congressman Richard Neal has described the loophole that... Read more of this article
Report: ‘Neal Bill Will Hurt US Consumers’
Calling the so-called “Bermuda Tax Loophole” in the US tax code “a sophisticated means of tax avoidance”, Massachusetts Congressman Richard Neal says his recently introduced legislation will add billions of dollars to Washington’s revenues. However, if the Neal Bill passes both the House of Representatives and the Senate,... Read more of this article
Bermuda Firm Proposed Solyndra Rescue Plan
President Barack Obama’s administration considered a plan proposed by Bermuda’s Lazard Ltd. to save Solyndra LLC that would have left the US with as much as 40 percent equity and two seats on the solar energy company’s board, according to e-mails obtained by the Bloomberg financial news service. The administration documents were sent yesterday... Read more of this article
Gay US Ambassador On Clinton’s Bermuda Offer
James Hormel, the openly gay San Francisco philanthropist, says he could have likely avoided a nasty Capitol Hill battle over his nomination as former President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Luxembourg if he had instead accepted an offer in 1997 to become the consul general in Bermuda. Three years earlier former President Bill Clinton’s decision... Read more of this article
ABIR Lobbies Deficit “Super Committee”
Significant changes in the US National Flood Insurance Programme [NFIP] -— including an end to all subsidies within five years — are being proposed by a diverse coalition including the Association of Bermuda Insurers & Reinsurers. Organised by lobbying group SmarterSafer.org — which describes itself as favouring “environmentally-responsible,... Read more of this article
“Tax Holiday” Will Boost Deficit, Not Jobs
In an editorial yesterday morning [Oct. 24] “The New York Times” says US corporations arguing that a “tax holiday” for profits held off-shore in jurisdictions including Bermuda would help to create jobs, mainly by giving them money to hire and expand. But the newspaper goes on to point out the National Bureau of Economic Research,... Read more of this article
Lobbying Battle Over “Tax Holiday” Plan
Goaded by battalions of corporate lobbyists, members of the US Congress are working to give a select group of US multinational firms like Apple, Oracle and Pfizer a lavish tax break on a trillion dollars kept offshore in financial centres including Bermuda. The Center for Public Integrity — an American nonprofit organisation dedicated to producing... Read more of this article
IRS Probes Google’s Bermuda Tax Avoidance
The US Internal Revenue Service is auditing how Google Inc. avoided American federal income taxes by shifting profits to subsidiaries in Bermuda and other off-shore jurisdictions, Bloomberg is reporting today [Oct. 13]. The agency is bringing “more than typical scrutiny to how the company valued software rights and other intellectual property... Read more of this article
US Senate Report Critical Of “Tax Havens”
US Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, released a report today [Oct. 12] that found that a 2004 repatriation tax break allowing US companies to bring $312 billion in offshore earnings back to the United States from off-shore domiciles including Bermuda at an extraordinarily low tax rate did not produce... Read more of this article
