Tax

Uber is backpedaling over an accounting error that led to tens of thousands of New York City drivers not getting their full pay for two and a half years.

Uber reportedly discovered the accounting error when it created a new receipt template for New York City drivers, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported this story.
The payments are the result of an error Uber said it recently discovered in how it calculated driver earnings. Until this week, Uber applied its “service fee”-typically 25% for UberX rides in New York City-to the gross fare, or the total amount paid by the passenger. But in a terms-of-service agreement dated to November 2014, Uber told drivers it calculated that commission based on the net fare, or the amount paid by the passenger minus sales tax and other applicable fees. Uber told WSJ that it will refund affected New York City drivers an average of $900 each, which includes interest on the loss profit over the past years.

According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Singapore’s stringent bank secrecy laws have attracted $1.1 trillion in foreign capital, and its growth rate is bypassing that of Switzerland. Singapore will become the world’s largest multinational financial center by 2028, according the report. For foreign capital, Singapore’s management is relatively lenient. Singapore immigration authorities only generally check "the first pot of gold" of the immigrant applicants.

Google has agreed to pay the internal revenue agency €306 million in taxes, sources said Thursday. The Mountain View-based company has been under investigation by Milan prosecutors for the tax years 2009-2013, one of several European probes looking into the tax practices of international companies.

A Google spokesman said the deal "resolved without disputes investigations relating to the period between 2002 and 2015". He said "in addition to the taxes already paid in Italy for those years, Google will pay another 306 million euros." Of these, "over 303 million are attributed to Google Italy and less than three million to Google Ireland." The spokesman said Google "confirms its commitment towards Italy and will continue to help the country’s online ecosystem grow".

Generally, investing in smaller companies is riskier than investing in larger companies. Large caps tend to be less volatile during rough markets as investors fly to quality and become more risk-averse. The long-term statistics certainly suggest that smaller companies do indeed outperform larger ones.

Mid caps lie between large cap stocks and small cap stocks.

In Europe the Eurostoxx Mid Index, has historically outperformed the broader Stoxx 600 Index, and in the last bull market started in 2009, the real gap in the performance between the two indexes, started in 2013, as we can see in the graph below where it is represented in the upper side the relative strength of the Eurostoxx Mid Index versus the Stoxx 600 Index, and in the lower side the historical performance of the two indexes.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported on Tuesday that Belgium has the highest tax rate when comparing 35 developed countries around the world while Germany (49.4%), Hungary (48.2 %) and France (48.1%) are also close to the 50 per cent mark. Switzerland is in the end of the ranking, with 21.8%. The lowest were in Chile (7%), New Zealand (17.9%) and Mexico (20.1%).

The OECD calculated each country’s tax wedge – the gap between what employers take home in pay and what it costs to employ them, including personal income tax and social security contributions.

Italy has introduced a flat rate of tax aimed at attracting wealthy expats to its shores as it looks to compete with similar regimes offered in the UK and Spain. Similar to the UK’s non-dom system, the new flat rate tax of €100,000 ($107,865) a year, which went live on 8 March, will give foreigners a special status exempting them from paying Italian tax on any offshore income and gains. This charge can also be extended to family members, at a cost of €25,000 per person.

The regime is available for up to 15 years, unless the individual fails to pay the charges. A person is considered an Italian resident for tax purposes if they are in the country for more than 183 days, or six months.

Switzerland has to deliver to Austria the information over billionaire Frank Stronach’s financial situation, as the Federal Court (TF) confirmed today, rejecting a lodged appeal by 84-year-old Austro-Canadian man.

The Austrian authorities sent Bern in November 2015 a request for administrative assistance. Vienna wants to determine whether the 84-year old billionaire has paid the taxes.

Donald Trump earned more than $150 million in the year 2005-and paid just a small percentage of that in regular federal income taxes. The documents show Trump and his wife Melania paying $5.3 million in regular federal income tax-a rate of less than 4%. Trump made a total income of $253 million in 2005, but wrote off $103 million in losses, according to the document, the first two pages of which were obtained by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston and first shared on “The Rachel Maddow Show.