<The Verizon CEO said the telecom would challenge any attempt by the top court to return the licenses to the FCC for fear that the government would force the companies to pay the prices they bid a year ago.>
I wonder how Senator Hollings is going to feel when he realizes he piddled $10 billion for the USA citizens down the gurgler by claiming he could figure out whether the NextWave/FCC/Verizon et al deal was a good thing in the space of about 20 minutes. That's not as much damage to USA financial interests as Osama's efforts, but it was pretty good.
The lawyers in this stream seem to have it figured out quite well. However, there is a precedent to elevate form over substance, even when going against the government, let along for the government. In the New Zealand winebox tax swindle [alleged, I should say, because NZ libel laws are such that to impugn the good character of a false-document offshore tax switcheroo backhander could lead me to the gallows] the legal decision, so far, is that form over substance is okay, making the false documents acceptable for tax disclosure purposes [or something to that effect]. I'll see if Google knows about it.
QUALCOMM should might therefore lose their financial interest in the $16 billion stack of loot being fought over.
I have no idea what the form over substance practise is in the USA [my guess is that it wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell - the USA tends to cut through that kind of nonsense; same as they are doing now with the pathetic European response to Moslems' murderous mania.
Anyway, here's the story [I've left some titillating irrelevancies in at the end...]. Google is one smart cookie! nznews.net.nz
<...The main Winebox deal saw the companies involved pay a fee to the Cook Islands government in return for certificates which appeared to show they'd paid tax in the Cook Islands. They hadn't - the documents were completely bogus - but European Pacific and the others took them back to the New Zealand Revenue and used them to avoid tax here.
Now if you or I were to present a false document in order to get out of paying tax, we'd be in deep trouble. But this is tax wizardy most devious. And, as Winston Peters has been braying, Sir Ron says in his report that the corporates "may create whatever falsities suit their purposes." As I understand it, like that of most former British colonies, our system places "form" over "substance" in assessing avoidance and there are reasons for that.
What happened still seems wrong to me, and it apparently seems wrong to Sir Ronald. There have already been major changes to the tax system since those wild days, and Sir Ron suggests a number of further measures to clip the wings of the corporates, including a hard look at "form versus substance". He says some of the things the companies did were unethical, but not technically illegal. He is a former Chief Justice of the High Court and he has spent three years on this, and, frankly, that's good enough for me.
Indeed, apart from some misgivings as to whether Sir Ron kept to his terms of reference on the part of journalists like Jenny McManus, only Winston Peters is claiming that Sir Ron has not done an amazing job. He had the IRD's chief investigator cross-examined for 28 days straight and Chas Sturt was pressed so hard that he had some sort of breakdown while he was being questioned. He dealt as severely as he could with the truckloads of corporate bullshit delivered to him. And he has prepared a 1000-page report to back up his conclusions. He is now 76 and he deserves to go off and do some fishing.
<<Editor: Off topic part follows....>>
All this Wineboxing has left me short of time and space to castigate the week's other buffoons, including youth affairs minister Deborah Morris, who has presided over a report on youth suicide in which the only thing that hasn't been said and said better before is the slightly bizarre suggestion that if we put catalytic converters on all car exhausts young people wouldn't be able to top themselves that way.
Morris, nose-piercing and all, has quickly developed a line of politician-speak that would make Jenny Shipley proud, but she did not deserve the condom controversy which raged rather pathetically around her this week. Taking out of context a suggestion she made about condoms in schools, Health Minister Bill English - a conservative Roman Catholic - railed against what he called the "condom culture".
Young people don't need advice on keeping themselves safe, says English, they need to be told not to have sex. Right. Teenagers have always reacted very well to that, haven't they? No one is proposing playtime lolly scrambles with rubber johnnies, but consider that our rates of teenage pregnancy have long been amongst the highest in the world, and that the leading cause of death of young people in the USA is now AIDS. It overtook car accidents there - and it could conceivably happen here. ...>
EuroPacific didit [OJdidit too]: geocities.com
It was a very big case in NZ. It's like a national sport. It's been running for two centuries, three decades and during about 3 different governments. It all started in 1987 approximately. Maybe the Privy Council will end up with the case and they will be supplanted as NZ's top court in political moves [and the Queen replaced by a President]. More Google links here: google.co.nz
Mqurice |
