Portugal has undergone a huge change. There is a completely new political leadership: younger, better prepared, and much more open to the civil society. But even this “right wing” government lack the theory to understand the causes of the crisis Portugal currently faces, and thus seem unable to deliver real change.
Switzerland, Luxembourg and Austria representatives recently said they would relax key bank secrecy laws to meet growing international demands for change. Their announcements followed similar moves by Belgium, Liechtenstein and…
After being seriously blamed by Italian Minister of finances Giulio Tremont last month, Switzerland finally finds itself largely approved on its private savings policy in the recently revealed by the EU Commission report on enforcement of taxation on savings regulation. As a matter of fact, France is the only EU country to accuse Swiss banks to implement mechanisms allowing some of the savings on Swiss bank accounts to avoid taxation in accordance with the agreement signed with the EU in 2004. The conflict opposing Switzerland and the EU on savings taxation lasts from several years now. Here is a brief history of the issue by Pierre Bessard, IREF fellow.
Moody’s rating agency warned on Friday on Italy’s public debt and mentioned the reviewing of Italy’s credit rating for a possible downgrade. This change, if it happens, would increase the government’s borrowing costs and have a very negative impact on public finances.
The credit rating agency Moody’s said it might downgrade the credit ratings of three of the largest French banks because of their exposure to the Greek debt crisis. According to…
More than 100 member countries representatives participated in the annual meeting of the Global Tax Forum in Bermuda. The Global Forum is charged with the monitoring and peer review of the implementation of the standards of transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes. It became notorious with the publication three years ago of grey and black lists of alleged “tax havens”.
Portugal is the third EU country after Greece and Ireland to need financial bail-out in order to avoid bankruptcy of the State. How did things go so wrong and for what reason – is it only the fault of the international financial crisis, or – more probably – bad management of public finances from the Potuguese government? Ricardo Campelo de Magalhães answers those questions in the light of a detailed analysis of Portuguese fiscal policy.
In January 2010, the largest tax reform in Denmark in more than ten years began taking effect, shifting some DKK 30 billion (€ 4.0 billion) of tax revenue when fully implemented in 2019. Of this, more than DKK 25 billion (€ 3.4 billion) is used to lower the marginal tax on income in order to encourage work and investment. In 2010 the top marginal tax rate was lowered from 63 percent to 56.1 percent – its lowest level in at least 40 years.
This is the amount of money promissed to Egypt and Tunisia by the multilateral development banks at the G8 meeting. This will include grants under the EUs budget for its…
IREF participated to the 8th European Resource Bank held in Yalta, Ukraine. Representatives from 50 think tanks joined the event and discussed the necessity to foster cooperation in order to…
