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It looks like Gov. Jerry Brown will not get his wish, and his tax plan will not be the only one on the November ballot.

Multimillionaire Molly Munger, with her income-tax increase for education, and the California Federation of Teachers, with its millionaires tax, show no signs of backing down.

Unlike the governor, who fears that multiple measures will amount to a circular firing squad, I say choice is healthy.

Let's be honest - all the tax plans are set up to pay for the interests of their backers. Munger and the teachers are all about money going to education. Brown, while saying his plan will help education, actually would give himself the freedom to spread the money around to a host of state programs.

Why not let the voters compare and decide, much the way they did with the dueling pension reform measures on the last San Francisco ballot? You'll notice, by the way, that one of those plans managed to pass, even though it had competition.

Compare, contrast and decide.

As for the antitax forces taking advantage of the situation? They are going to be antitax no matter if there are one or three measures on the ballot.

There's a real surprise in store for President Obama when he comes to town later this month.

You might recall that just a couple of weeks ago, when he was in Harlem, Obama stepped out of his professorial character when he sang the opening bars to Al Green's hit "Let's Stay Together."

It was a rare glimpse of the guy hanging loose.

Well, his San Francisco host, Robert Mailer Anderson, has lined up the Reverend Al himself for the president's fundraiser.

Who knows, maybe they can sing a duet.

The Chinese New Year's Parade is, of course, mandatory for our politicians. And you have to hope you're insulted by Rose Pak at the grandstand so people will remember you were there.

But it's the Coronation Ball for Miss Chinatown, which was held Friday, that's the big one for our town's big shots.

The pecking order is determined by when you're called from your table to dance with the contestants - with the biggest names in the house being summoned to dance with the winner.

There's a move in town to string 25,000 LED lights off the western span of the Bay Bridge, part of the bridge's upcoming 75th anniversary.

They rolled out the plan at the Waterbar restaurant the other night to kick-start a $7 million fundraising effort. It's going to be one of the most spectacular displays you've ever seen.

The LEDs will create a floating light show that will outdo anything Las Vegas has ever tried. Leo Villareal, who's known the world over as a light artist, is designing patterns that will vary depending on where you're looking at them.

Mayor Ed Lee and many of our local tech types were at the preview, because this is going to be the ultimate symbol of San Francisco as the high-tech capital of the world.

A few years back, the first Heroes & Hearts auction of giant painted hearts to benefit San Francisco General Hospital was held in Union Square.

They're still doing it, and so many people come now that Thursday's event had to be held at AT&T Park. The first event was 90 percent women. This year, it was a 50-50 split.

Guess the guys are getting some heart.

Movie time: "Safe House." Denzel Washington gets out of the car from "Training Day" and into a CIA quadruple double-cross in South Africa.

Run, don't walk, to see this one.

The Museum of the African Diaspora is having an informal Black History Month film festival. They're playing "Stormy Weather" with Lena Horne, "St. Louis Blues" with Nat King Cole, "Pinky" and "Harlem Nights," among others.

Not only is the museum playing them, it's selling them on DVD as well.

The other night this guy comes up to me and says, "Those swipes you've been taking about Silicon Valley millionaires exporting jobs are really hypocritical, especially considering all the jobs you've created overseas."

"What jobs are those?" I asked.

"Tailoring. Everything you wear is made in Italy."

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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Jerry Brown tax plan has competition

Seven out of ten expatriates in the UAE do not understand the country’s local customs and traditions, a new survey has revealed.

Only 60 percent of expats claim to know the basics of UAE culture while 72 percent admit to knowing very little about their host country.

Just 28 percent of the 2,000 expats polled by 999 Magazine, the official magazine for the Abu Dhabi Police and Ministry of Labour, claimed to have any real knowledge of the country’s traditions while eleven percent confessed to not even bothering to try to learn.

“The UAE is home to more than 200 different nationalities and has become known across the world for its low crime, modern outlook and the peaceful co-existence of its people. A survey conducted by 999… reveals a dismaying fact that many expat residents have a very limited knowledge of the customs, traditions and heritage of the UAE,” Lt colonel Awadh Saleh Al Kindi, Editor-in-chief of 999, told Khaleej Times.

“We hope that the results of the survey will stimulate people to exert greater efforts in this area,” he added.

Half of respondents polled said they try to learn about Emirati culture “occasionally” while sixteen percent said “hardly ever” in spite 70 percent admitting to have enough resources available to learn.

The UAE, like much of the region, heavily depends on foreign workers to fill jobs at all levels of the economy. Expats hold top roles in sectors such as airlines and financial services, with the majority of low-skilled roles also taken up by migrant workers. An estimated 83.5 percent of the UAE population is made up by expats.

The Gulf state was ranked the least friendly country in the world for expatriates by Forbes magazine last month based on data from HSBC’s Expat Explorer Survey, which polled 3,385 expats in 100 countries on factors such as economy, raising children and overall experience.

Forbes, which stripped out data in four categories – ability to befriend locals, success in learning the language, integration into the community and ease of fitting into the local culture – to rank the world’s top spots for migrant workers, said the UAE, Hong Kong and Singapore did not fare well in community integration and befriending locals but performed well in those relating to career prospects and high income.

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UAE expats clueless about Emirati culture

A judgment ahead of our times! M R Venkatesh / Feb 13, 2012, 00:06 IST

The Vodafone judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in January, 2012, has set the cat amongst the pigeons. At a macro level it has the calculated effect of implicitly legitimizing tax havens, weakens our cause against illicit wealth parked abroad and explicitly sanctions corporate structures that use tax havens primarily as a tax avoidance measure.

Idea of look at
Central to the argument of the Supreme Court, has been the principle of “Look at” in the Westminster case as propounded by the English Courts in 1930’s wherein it was held “given that a document or transaction is genuine, the court cannot go behind it to some supposed underlying substance.” The Supreme Court holds this to be a cardinal principle to this date in India.

To amplify, the “Look at” principle presumably implies the courts need not be too concerned with the substance but only with the form of a transaction. That has extraordinary implications for the government as a whole in the immediate future.

Subsequent to Westminster, even in Britain, attempts were made to re-look at the entire issue by the English courts in the Ramsay and Dawson cases where the courts sought to overturn the “Look At” principle.

The Courts in Ramsay held “To force the courts to adopt, in relation to closely integrated situations, a step by step, dissecting, approach which the parties themselves may have negated, would be a denial rather than an affirmation of the true judicial process. In each case the facts must be established, and a legal analysis made: legislation cannot be required or even be desirable to enable the courts to arrive at a conclusion which corresponds with the parties’ own intentions.”

The ultimate question that the courts repeatedly ask in such circumstances is whether the relevant statutory provisions, construed purposively, were realistically applied to the transaction.

It may not be out of place to mention that the Irish Court as late as in December, 2011, in Revenue Commissioners vs O’Flynn Constructions & Others had an opportunity to deal with the extant subject. O’Donnell J noted that in Ramsay and Dawson, the courts took a novel approach on the issue of tax avoidance “without reversing or appearing to question the decision in Westminster case.” And that is the crux of the issue.

Alien country; different times
What is equally worrying is that a legal proposition held in an alien country when it was a colonial power has been extrapolated into interpretation of tax laws of a sovereign country in entirely different times, especially when it involves convoluted transactions routed through tax havens. It is in this connection, citing another decision by the Ireland Supreme Court in the case of McGrath vs McDermott, the same court refused to consider the judicial development in the common law of another country. This pronouncement is equally important for the “independent” development of jurisprudence in our country.

Even in India, judicial developments suggests that we were moving out of the Westminster Principle as exemplified by the McDowell case where the Supreme Court frowned on every scheme of tax avoidance. From then on, the courts both in India and abroad, as matter of principle looked through a transaction instead of merely looking at one. What is indeed worrying now is that The Vodafone judgment overturns the well-settled principle of looked through and revives, nay exhumes, the outdated principle of “Look At.”

Naturally, the issues relating to Vodafone are smaller order of smalls. At the root of the present consternation is the idea of “Looked At” embedded in the CBDT circular in the Azadi Bachao Andolan case, which the Supreme Court has heavily relied in the instant case. It is also submitted that the stand of the department is morally nonexistent against Vodafone, as long as Circular No 789 issued by the CBDT continues to occupy our statute books.

It may not be out of place to mention that the question uppermost in the minds of the courts was whether the sale of a single share of CGP – a company in Cayman Islands - and “shoved” into the entire deal at the proverbial eleventh hour consummated in Hutch becoming Vodafone in India. Why Cayman Islands? The answer to that question is obvious as Cayman Island is a tax haven. No wonder, by choosing Cayman Island as a structure, the deal sanctified the idea of “Double Non-Taxation.”

Holding – subsidiary relationship
There is another dimension central to the debate on hand. The judgment re-writes some fundamental assumptions in corporate laws. Introducing the theory of puppets in the context of relationship between a holding company and its subsidiaries, it concludes that the directors of the subsidiaries cannot be held to be mere “puppets” of a holding company.

The judgment further opines that subsidiaries of multinational companies “have great deal autonomy in the country concerned except where subsidiaries are created or used as sham.” The moot question is whether the Cayman Island structure was created for genuine purposes or was it a sham. This is not clear from the reading of the judgment. Nevertheless one hastens to add that one has never heard of genuine structures in tax havens.

In the process the Court has not fully reconciled the idea of directing mind principle in corporate law, the very definition of subsidiaries as enunciated by Companies Act, and its own “puppet theory.” It may not be out of place to mention that the transfer of a single share, several directors owing allegiance to Hutch in downstream companies resigned, and directors appointed by Vodafone assumed control.

It is also respectfully submitted that the idea of borrowing from the DTC (which is still in an embryonic stage) is pregnant with serious legal consequences. By that logic a proposal to abolish capital punishment in India could well be the arguments of convicts to escape the hangman’s noose!

Obviously, the ghosts of Vodafone will continue to haunt Indian business and government for a long time to come. There are some unanswered questions; some answers that require greater appreciation on the facts and circumstances of the case and some are perhaps ahead of our times. Whatever be it, one must concede it is the law of the land, for the Supreme Court is well and truly supreme, through not infallible.

The author is a Chennai-based chartered accountant. He can be contacted at mrv@mrv.net.in  

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A judgment ahead of our times!

Suncorp Group is the latest financial services company to announce redundancies, by sending 65 accounting positions to India.

Finance Sector Union (FSU) national secretary Leon Carter said two thirds of the positions would come from Brisbane and the remainder NSW.

Mr Carter said Suncorp had now moved 203 jobs offshore in the past six months, including 50 roles in claims, 17 in Suncorp Business Services, 71 roles in personal insurance and 65 roles in accounting.

"Suncorp's offshoring program appears to be gaining pace with the company announcing another 65 jobs will head to India in 2012," Mr Carter said in a statement.

The FSU says some of the affected staff are involved in compiling the insurance and banking company's half yearly and annual reports.

The redundancies announced on Wednesday came a fortnight after Suncorp confirmed 71 roles would be sent offshore.

"At this rate, employment opportunities for the next generation of finance workers will be severely limited," Mr Carter said.

A Suncorp spokeswoman said many employees felt "really burnt" after putting in long hours to assist Queensland flood victims with insurance claims last year.

While Suncorp would not reveal the exact number of redundancies, a spokeswoman said some staff would be offered other roles within the company.

She said the 65 positions quoted by FSU did not consider "immediate redeployment" and "expression of interest opportunities".

"We expect that the net number of roles impacted will likely be around 40," she said.

"We are currently in consultation with the impacted employees regarding our intention to engage a partner company to undertake some of our back office accounting functions.

"Our preference is to redeploy these people across the group, where possible."

She said the group anticipates its employee base will decline over the medium term.

On Tuesday Macquarie Group said it planned to cut 10 per cent of its investment banking jobs and last week Westpac briefed workers about 410 job cuts and positions it would relocate to India as part of a group-wide restructure.

FSU figures released in January showed National Australia Bank, ANZ Banking Group, Westpac and Commonwealth Bank collectively made 3,309 roles redundant in 2011.

Suncorp shares were up 29 cents at $8.47 on Wednesday.

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Suncorp to send 65 more jobs offshore: FSU

Suncorp Group is the latest financial services company to announce redundancies, by sending 65 accounting positions to India.

Finance Sector Union (FSU) national secretary Leon Carter said two thirds of the positions would come from Brisbane and the remainder NSW.

Mr Carter said Suncorp had now moved 203 jobs offshore in the past six months, including 50 roles in claims, 17 in Suncorp Business Services, 71 roles in personal insurance and 65 roles in accounting.

'Suncorp's offshoring program appears to be gaining pace with the company announcing another 65 jobs will head to India in 2012,' Mr Carter said in a statement.

The FSU says some of the affected staff are involved in compiling the insurance and banking company's half yearly and annual reports.

The redundancies announced on Wednesday came a fortnight after Suncorp confirmed 71 roles would be sent offshore.

'At this rate, employment opportunities for the next generation of finance workers will be severely limited,' Mr Carter said.

A Suncorp spokeswoman said many employees felt 'really burnt' after putting in long hours to assist Queensland flood victims with insurance claims last year.

While Suncorp would not reveal the exact number of redundancies, a spokeswoman said some staff would be offered other roles within the company.

She said the 65 positions quoted by FSU did not consider 'immediate redeployment' and 'expression of interest opportunities'.

'We expect that the net number of roles impacted will likely be around 40,' she said.

'We are currently in consultation with the impacted employees regarding our intention to engage a partner company to undertake some of our back office accounting functions.

'Our preference is to redeploy these people across the group, where possible.'

She said the group anticipates its employee base will decline over the medium term.

On Tuesday Macquarie Group said it planned to cut 10 per cent of its investment banking jobs and last week Westpac briefed workers about 410 job cuts and positions it would relocate to India as part of a group-wide restructure.

FSU figures released in January showed National Australia Bank, ANZ Banking Group, Westpac and Commonwealth Bank collectively made 3,309 roles redundant in 2011.

At 1527 AEDT Suncorp shares were 30 cents, or 3.7 per cent, higher at $8.48.

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Suncorp to send 65 more jobs offshore