US officials said on Monday that more than 77,000 banks and other financial institutions worldwide have joined its fight against tax evasion.
That number of institutions in nearly 70 countries have registered to work under the rules of the US’ Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which is scheduled to be implemented on July 1.
The US law demands that the foreign banks, investment houses and others provide information to US authorities on accounts held by US citizens and firms.
If they do not comply, the US Treasury says it could institute a 30 percent withholding tax on payments made from the US to the financial institution, essentially a stiff tax on its US business.
Three years after initiating the FATCA program, the US Treasury says most institutions in most major economies have signed on.
“The strong international support for FATCA is clear, and this success will help us in our goal of stopping tax evasion and narrowing the tax gap,” said Robert Stack, the Treasury’s deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs.
Looking for ways to close its budget deficit and clamp down on tax avoidance, Washington has particularly aimed the FATCA effort at traditional tax havens like Switzerland.
On May 19, Credit Suisse was fined US$2.6 billion for actively helping Americans hide money to avoid taxes over many years.
Credit Suisse was one of 14 Swiss banks under criminal investigation by the US Justice Department on suspicion they helped wealthy US clients hide billions of US dollars in assets from US tax authorities.
Countries continue to sign up to FATCA. Last month, Liechtenstein, the small European tax haven, sealed an anti-tax fraud pact with Washington that requires banks in the principality to provide information about accounts held by US taxpayers.
“The unhampered access to US capital markets, which has been secured by the agreement, is essential for Liechtenstein providers of financial services,” Liechtenstein’s Prime Minister Adrian Hasler said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained