Internally, corporate taxes have been lowered further in several cantons. Much uncertainty surrounds the planned corporate tax reform to increase acceptance of the Swiss tax system towards the European Union, which has been criticizing some cantonal corporate tax rules for years and is expecting progress on the part of Switzerland. In the field of international tax compliance of non-resident clients of Swiss banks, agreements have been implemented with Austria and the UK on a withholding tax designed to regularize the situation of potentially untaxed assets, and with the United States on a simplified implementation of its controversial FATCA legislation.
Sweden has a center right government since 2006. This government has reduced the total taxes as percentage of GDP from 48,8 in 2006 to 44,0 in 2012. Only Denmark has higher total taxes. In 2013 the corporate income tax was reduced to 22 percent. Including taxes on income paid by employers, Sweden still has the highest marginal tax rate in the world, 70 percent. The Swedish National Tax Agency is perhaps more important on tax policy than the ministry of finance.
Fiscal consolidation should have been the priority of the government in 2012, but due to early elections in spring, most of the measures were deferred to year 2013. As a result, public de?cit of 4.6% of GDP did not change compared to previous year. New leftist government applied some moderate changes in taxation and social contributions in 2012, but main tax package came into force in 2013. Flat tax rate was wiped out, tax hikes in corporate and personal income tax rate has been introduced. With a 6% growth of total government expenditures in 2012, the public de?cit exceeds 10% of total government tax revenues leaving the question of further tax hikes open.
For many years since the break-up of Yugoslavia in early 90’s, Slovenia represented a success story which was not frequent among transitional countries. The world’s ?nancial crisis came to Slovenia in 2008 and caught the country totally unprepared. The value of most shares decreased sharply thus resulting in serious losses which in turn became a problem for Slovenian banking sector due to the fact the banks in most cases were ?nancing purchases of the shares for the investors (state-owned banks have the biggest proportion of bad debts). Since then Slovenia is facing general economic downturn and in 2013 Slovenia the banking system is still not working properly resulting in very low activity of domestic banks. On top of this, this country is facing a recession – GDP fell by 2,3% in 2012 and is very likely to further decrease by 2,1% in year 2013. The investment activities decreased tremendously and the almost entire construction sector went bankrupt in 2012. In addition Slovenia was very slow in cutting the expenditures – simply, there was not enough political will to adopt crucial structural reforms in the area of social welfare (labor and pension legislation, social transfers, … ) in the mandate of Slovenian government between 2008 and 2011.
The economic crisis in Spain highlighted the lack of response from the Government as well as the wasteful public spending, both mirrored in the huge public de?cits and the resultant sovereign debt crisis. The Socialist Party called early general elections for November 2011 due to lack of popular support and credibility. The alternative, the conservative Party (Popular Party) went to the election promising not to raise taxes and, even, lower them, and bring order to public ?nances.
Systemic chaos
Looking at the main tax types, there was no change in the corporate profit tax in 2012, the rate of the personal income tax remained 16% but the tax temporarily became progressive due to changes in the calculation of the tax base while the standard VAT rate increased from 25% to 27%. Furthermore, the sectorial taxes previously claimed to be temporary were definitively incorporated in the tax system, and a number of small-volume consumption taxes were introduced under the pressure for continuous budget adjustments due to the deteriorating economic figures.
Austria today faces a double challenge: to consolidate the country’s fiscal position through effective fiscal and structural policies aimed at reducing the budget deficit and lowering the public debt to GDP ratio. In 2012, Austria managed to narrow its public deficit below 3 percent according to European Union’s Maastricht criteria. In 2012 the public deficit was 2.5% and is estimated to fall to 2.2% in 2013, below the European criteria. State debt is set to peak at 74.7% of GDP in 2012 and 75.4 in 2013, above the EU norm of 60%. Regarding taxation, most of the taxes rates remained unchanged with the exception of flight tax; however tax increases should be expected within 2013 due to the Austrian Consolidation Program 2012-2016. With that program the Austrian federal government is setting the course for a structural and sustainable consolidation of the federal budget, aiming to balance the budget in 2016 and reducing the public debt to 71% of GDP in 2016.
After publishing the real figures of the tax exile as part of the IREF research, this book tells the story of these exiles who are leaving not only for tax reasons, but also because they had enough with this France. A country where more than half of the population is living thanks to public money!
This book is written as a testimony from daily facts encounters by a tax lawyer, whose main activity is to support those who wish to leave France. Among them: industrial, retirees, entrepreneurs, young people, old people… This is an important part of the French wealth that goes … For the first time, a tax lawyer talks openly!
Key Figures
United States: 800,000 Civil Servants Unemployed Means 212,000 Private Sector Jobs Created
About a month ago, the United States experienced the “Shutdown” for 15 days. Several jurisdictions were closed and about 800,000 employees have been laid off because no agreement was reached on the budget. The Democrats and President Obama cried about the paralysis of the economy in order to end the “shutdown”. In fact, the US economy has not been affected by the shutdown. More: the US economy even experienced an upturn. According to the data on the third quarter, U.S. GDP grew by 2.8% and more than 212,000 net jobs were created in the private sector! Long live the “shutdown”!