Cough, cough! The Municipal Transport Commission of the municipality of Beijing is encouraging communities within the fourth ring road of the city to build more than 110,000 new parking spaces by the end of the year and is offering a tax rebate of RMB 2,000 for each space, according to the Beijing Times. Beijing has 5 million cars and that number is growing. The parking problem is acute: there are currently only 2.48 million parking places within the city.

The engine of economic growth in China this century just happens to be the internal combustion engine. Car sales bolster the economy and provide not just a heck of a lot of taxes and jobs but expansion into many, many different areas. You've got to build roads for those cars.... an entire new motel industry will develop - patterned along the US post World War II model that spearheaded US economic growth during the last half of the 20th century. Only in the US, I think - or I remember ... but that too can be clouded by a senior moment - they planned for parking places. 110,000 more parking places is not going to alleviate anything - Beijing does

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International commerce brings with it not only the anticipated profit but also the prospect of uncollected trade debt. The creditor is then faced with the search for unencumbered assets, most likely outside their own jurisdiction. In an international claim or commercial dispute, the creditor is faced with certain challenges that he does not find in a purely domestic dispute, namely:

• Power of Attorney

Unlike the United States and Canada, authorizing a foreign attorney might require a formal Power of Attorney that often must be executed before a Notary Public and then authenticated by the consulate or embassy of the foreign country where the foreign attorney is located. In some countries, a letter of authorization by the creditor addressed to the foreign attorney will suffice.

• Fee Structure of Foreign Attorney

Whereas in Canada and the United States claims are often accepted on a purely contingent basis, in many countries, attorneys are forbidden by their local bar regulations to accept claims other than on an hourly rate and will, therefore, require an advance retainer against such fees.

•

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I recently spent a week in New Delhi and Mumbai, speaking at tax conferences about U.S., Chinese, and Indian tax matters. Now I am back in Hong Kong, where at the Shatin Race Track, the first race is over and not one of the four horses I bet on in a quinella were in the money. I certainly hope that my tax choices are better than my ability to bet on the ponies. I won in races 5-9, but as usual came away with a lighter wallet. I love the ponies, though, and the racing form is the only chance I get to study numbers that have nothing to do with taxes.

They say that there is no such thing as a sure bet — all those inside tips are worthless. But there is a sure bet in India. The India-Switzerland income tax treaty has taken effect, and it is guaranteed that any shady Indian money in Switzerland before the effective date of  the treaty has either been transferred to Singapore or been reduced to avoid any ‘‘black money’’ connota- tions. With all the fuss about money being hidden overseas by wealthy Indians, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is limited

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Oh, it sounded so good when we, the voters, were given the choice of limiting how much tax we’d pay, tied in to the date we purchased property, locking ourselves into a valuation based on purchase date even though inflation would raise property fair market value and hence assessed tax and tax collections from all those new buyers. Those of us who purchased homes and intended to live in them forever loved it. Let those who were frequent movers suffer the consequences. Some of us were locked into a tax that seemingly got lower as the years went by. Of course, this is a prime contributor to why California counties now can’t raise sufficient revenues.In Hong Kong and China, where housing is a commodity that is traded as the day trader deals with the rapid ups and downs of stocks on the market, tax authorities would not have those problems. Property taxation is, as I have previously written, in its infancy in China. It is a tax that must develop as municipalities are rapidly running out of long-term land leases they can sell. It is easy to raise revenue when you’ve got excess land for sale. It becomes a nightmare when your city runs out of land, curtailing that

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I began playing politics in California in 1960 when I got involved in the movement to draft Adlai Stevenson as the 1960 Democratic Party presidential nominee. I have continued having political interests, albeit on a more international basis, after moving to the other side of the Pacific in 1990. I thrived on information gathered during visits to Washington, Sacramento, or Los Angeles in the past. Now I’m close to the source of political policy in Beijing and Guangzhou, and in Bangkok, Singapore, and Delhi as well, cities where there is tremendous power being wielded by brokers who do not want to be represented in the press. I respect their wishes, but it is hard to believe that I’ve been here long enough to witness these individuals rise to positions of power.

These movers and shakers are concerned about inflation — scared out of their minds is more like it. They want to curb speculation, but they worry about how to do it. On August 17 the central government in Beijing announced policy directives, effective immediately, requiring provincial governments to report progress in curbing rising home prices. Taxing short-term sales has a lot to do with cooling off the

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PART I.

YOU WILL NEED A SECOND PASSPORT!

Generally, I don’t follow the politics of the day.  Many lawyers’ mantra is “let’s just work with the laws we are given...”  I find this hard to understand.  At law school, I worked as a legal  assistant  for the Office of Chief Counsel International at L'Enfant Plaza in Washington, D.C.  We had interactions daily with Congresspeople and Senators as they tried to understand legislative bills.  We also tried to understand, subsequently, the intent of the Senate and Congress in passing the legislation.  Now, the legislative bodies and the Executive Branch are passing bills like never before!  Just a few years ago, I would get a monthly publication, compliments of the U.S. Treasury, detailing the changes in the tax law.  This was usually less than 25 pages and easy to read over a weekend with strong coffee. Now, I get daily updates on the legislative changes; averaging 3 plus a day!!!  I find my weekends filled with trying

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I learned how Chinese power politics based on financial clout work in 1999, when I served as chair for the American Chamber of Commerce-South China. As AmCham chair, I gave face time to Chinese high-level provincial leaders who reciprocated with the necessary guanxi to get me the same rights and privileges as the Big Four accounting firms in the P.R.C. - without the costs they paid to obtain their licenses. I maintained that accounting practice for a decade, until I retired from active accountancy. Of course, the coming of Sarbanes-Oxley had a lot to do with it: That legislation took all the fun out of being an accountant!

I was invited to attend a meeting as an initial board delegate to the business plan/proposal that eventually became the Binhai New Economic Development Zone, emanating from Tianjin. Based on what I saw and heard, I determined the plan was developed in Guangzhou but under provincial direction. As far as I can conclude, this was the business model that was taken over by the central government. The central government owed the financial developers from Guangdong big-time, and Guangdong had the clout to see that it got the proper compensation. They got

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Where is the black money hidden? India is hellbent on finding it, only the math does not add up.

On June 18, in a speech made in Hyderabad, Finance Secretary Sunil Mitra said India has to renegotiate and modify 87 double taxation avoidance agreements (DTAAs). ‘‘From 2010 and 2011, we have identified 65 of our double taxation avoidance agreements that need to be amended so that we have freer access to information. Twenty-two we have identified with whom we need to do tax information exchange. . . . So 87 agreements we need to either renegotiate or we need to do afresh,’’ Mitra said, according to the June 19 edition of dailyindia.com.

Mitra also said India has DTAAs with 79 countries. Thus, it would appear that brand-new treaties are going to be needed with eight other countries. Who are those countries? It just might behoove some Indian nationals to move funds to one of the eight countries where new treaties will be negotiated because it is going to take three to eight years to enact a treaty. Ex post facto laws will likely apply so that information about money matters before the date of the treaty will not

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