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RICHARD CURTIS drills into the tax implications of the Shell and Royal Dutch Petroleum merger.
RICHARD CURTIS drills into the tax implications of the Shell and Royal Dutch Petroleum merger.
NO ONE LIKES to pay tax least of all when one has not received any of 'the folding stuff' from which to pay it! Unfortunately this appears to be the prospect facing almost two thousand UK taxpayers. These are the UK resident shareholders in N.V. Koninklijke Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij (the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company or 'Royal Dutch' hereafter) which is the Dutch 'arm' of the Royal Dutch/Shell group; the UK arm being the Shell Transport and Trading Company plc.
The 2004 debacle concerning the overstatement of oil reserves by Shell — leading to substantial fines and the departure of executives — concentrated minds in the group that perhaps this might have been in part at least caused by its dual-headed corporate structure. It was also felt...
