Tax dodging causes the EU to lose about 1 trillion euros (US$1.307 trillion) of income each year, the president of the European Council said on Friday as he announced that EU leaders would discuss the issue at a summit next month.
This hemorrhage of tax revenues is equivalent to the entire annual economic output of Spain, and far exceeds the total of about 400 billion euros committed to the bailouts of eurozone member states Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus.
“We must seize the increased political momentum to address this critical problem,” Herman Van Rompuy, who chairs meetings of EU leaders, said in a statement broadcast on the Internet. “Tax evasion is unfair to citizens who work hard and pay their share of taxes for society to work. It is unfair to companies that pay their taxes, but find it hard to compete because others don’t.”
Van Rompuy’s message, and the addition of the issue to the agenda of the summit in Brussels on May 22, will add to pressure on Austria to conform with the rest of the EU on sharing information about bank depositors.
Austria is the only one of the EU’s 27 member states unwilling to sign up to EU rules on the automatic exchange of depositor data, with the Austrian minister of finance intent on protecting Austria’s long history of banking secrecy.
EU policymakers say having all EU countries signed up to the EU savings directive, the piece of legislation that calls for sharing of depositor data, would help to combat tax evasion.
Luxembourg, which has the biggest banking sector in the EU relative to its GDP, announced this week it was willing to sign up to the directive from January 2015.
The shifting tide has raised alarm in Switzerland, the world’s biggest offshore banking center with US$2 trillion in assets, as well as in Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein Prime Minister Adrian Hasler told Swiss television on Thursday his country was well aware of mounting pressure over the issue.
“The financial center knows that at some point it may go in this direction now that there is a certain momentum in the question,” he said.
EU finance ministers, meeting in Dublin on Friday, discussed the problem, which Germany and the European Commission have said they are determined to tackle so as to close tax avoidance loopholes.
Van Rompuy said about one trillion euros was being lost across the EU each year because of tax evasion and avoidance.
“To give you an idea, one trillion euros is about the same as the entire GDP or total income of Spain, the fifth biggest economy of the European Union,” he said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary
RSS