According to the New York Times, President Obama will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year. The investor Warren Buffett inspired…
Taxes
The game of representative democracy is such that we constantly have to choose, not between policies, but between programs that are best seen as baskets of policies to be implemented if the candidate supporting that program is elected. The basket that the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, “sold” to his electors in 2007 was, as always, made of all kinds of policies. But there was one on which he particularly insisted on during the elections and that, in my opinion, brought him the support from many voters: the promise that, if he was elected, individuals who will work more will earn more. “Travailler plus pour gagner plus”– with those words, he was promoting a move away from a society in which the extra money you make is redistributed away from you. At least that’s the way many people understood it.
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.
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.
One of the biggest Bulgarian newspapers Ce?? published an article from IREF’s board member Pierre Garello. The article is presenting the main conclusions of our Yearbook on European Taxation 2011.…
The Spanish newspaper LibreMercado.com published an article from IREF’s fellow Angel Martin, with reference to our Yearbook on European Taxation 2011. You can read the paper here.
France’s government presents a project to introduce several modifications in the fiscal law; a project to be validated by the National Assembly before the symbolic date of July 14.
This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
In the past year, Brussels has revealed its near-obsession with fiscal convergence in Europe. As the euro zone’s debt crises roil financial markets, the EU’s leaders have made clear that the only path they see to survival is centralized budgetary oversight and harmonized tax policy.
