Tax

The Italian inland revenue service, L’Agenzia delle Entrate, on Wednesday applied a new flat tax aimed at attracting wealthy foreigners to Italy in a bid to compete with similar incentives offered in Britain and Spain, which have successfully attracted a slew of rich footballers and entertainers.

The new flat rate tax of €100,000 a year will apply to all worldwide income for foreigners who declare Italy to be their residency for tax purposes.
The measure, proposed in Italy’s 2017 budget, is expected to immediately draw in at least a thousand people, according to local media.

The impact of automation on jobs and society is an increasingly hot topic, with debates going on about how and when human workers will be displaced by robots and A.I. systems.

Bill Gates said in a recent interview with Quartz that governments should tax companies’ use of automation technologies, to mitigate the impact of job losses. “Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things,” Gates said. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”

Sweden’s government has an unusual complaint, it is collecting too much tax. With interest rates in the country at -0.5%, holding cash in bank accounts and other savings vessels provides little to no return and in many cases actually costs people money.

According to data released by the government on Wednesday, Sweden ended 2016 with a budget surplus of 85 billion kroner ($9.5 billion), and about half of that was due to individuals and businesses paying more tax than they needed to as a means of actually making money.

"The development of Sweden’s central government finances is still affected by excess deposits in tax accounts," a report from the Swedish National Debt Office said.

The EU is “very disappointed” in the Swiss people’s rejection of the government’s corporate tax reform plan, the EU’s tax commissioner MOscovici said on Monday.

Voters on Sunday blocked the tax system revamp, sending the Swiss government back to the drawing board as it tries to abolish ultra-low tax rates for multinationals without triggering a mass exodus by those companies. "The Commission is very disappointed by the results of a referendum in Switzerland," Moscovici told a news conference.

"The rejection of the reform and referendum means we need to redouble our efforts when it comes to taxation. The Commission plans to consult the member states so we can decide together how to proceed," he said.

Voters rejected plans to overhaul Switzerland’s corporate tax system. Corporate tax reform III was rejected by popular referendum on Sunday, with 59.1% of the population voting against the Swiss government proposal. The “yes” won only in four cantons: Nidwalden, Ticino, Vaud, and Zug.

The aim of the reform was to make the Swiss tax system more acceptable internationally. The government had hoped to secure approval for changes that would keep corporate tax rates globally competitive while abolishing special treatment for many multinational companies.

“It will not be possible to find a solution overnight,” Ueli Maurer, the Swiss finance minister, said at a news conference in Bern, adding that it could take a year to come up with a new plan and years more to enact it.

President Donald Trump pledged Thursday he will soon unveil a “phenomenal” tax cut plan. "Lowering the overall tax burden on American business is big league. That’s coming along very well. We’re way ahead of schedule," Trump said during a White House meeting with airline industry executives on Thursday.

Trump and GOP congressional leaders have come under fire recently from some conservatives for not taking action on popular campaign promises like cutting taxes and repealing Obamacare.

The year 2017 is an important one for the Swiss banking sector. As of January 1st, the country’s financial institutions are now obligated to share banking information. This new regulation effectively ends Switzerland’s reputation as a tax haven.

The Swiss finance ministry said on Thursday it had reached a deal with Liechtenstein to exchange tax information, potentially helping to uncover billions of dollars in undeclared assets kept by Swiss citizens in neighbouring country.
“These assets will be declared and the person has the chance either to repatriate the assets to Switzerland, or he will be taxed and he keeps his money in Liechtenstein,” said Joerg Gasser, head of the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters, a branch of the finance ministry.
The amount of undeclared Swiss assets in Liechtenstein, a principality of just 38,000 people sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria, is unknown.

Mossack Fonseca actively marketed Canada as a tax haven and established shell companies here to evade taxes, according to the documents obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and shared with the Star and the CBC.

The joint investigation has revealed that Canada’s tax legislation provides favorable conditions for evading taxes, creating anonymous business entities, and cleaning illegally-gained cash.