EU finance ministers on Tuesday agreed how to screen countries for a blacklist of tax havens across the world, officials said, adding that applying zero-rate taxes was not necessarily a factor, prompting an outcry.
The bloc in May committed to agree on a common list of tax offenders by the end of next year, after leaked documents — the so-called “Panama Papers” — that showed how some multinationals and individuals avoided paying tax, caused worldwide outrage.
Tuesday’s agreement on defining tax havens cited zero-rate tax only as “an indicator of possible unfair practices,” Italian Minister of Economy and Finances Pier Carlo Padoan said after the meeting.
That prompted German leftist EU lawmaker Fabio de Masi to say the plans were “akin to a whitewash.”
“It is grotesque that some EU member states regard the zero-tax criterion as being too strict. Even the Bahamas are going to be exempt from this,” he said in a note.
All 28 EU countries have a right of veto on tax issues and this has scuppered past attempts at a common blacklist.
Acknowledging divisions among EU member states and the opposition to stricter tax measures from those which apply very low tax rates, Slovak Minister of Finance Peter Kazimir said: “This can be the veto area for certain countries.”
The European Commission published an initial list in September, which named 81 countries and jurisdictions that have a higher chance of facilitating tax avoidance and might be subject to further screening and even sanctions.
Critics fear the final list might be much shorter and exclude well-known tax havens.
Human rights group Oxfam called for the blacklist to include Switzerland and some states within the EU that it identified as corporate tax havens, including “the Netherlands, Belgium, Cyprus and Luxembourg.”
“Tax havens are helping big business cheat countries and their citizens out of billions of dollars in tax every year. By starving countries of money needed for education, healthcare and job creation, tax havens are exacerbating poverty and inequality across the world,” it said in a statement.
In a separate decision, ministers on Tuesday also agreed on new rules to allow tax authorities to access information on the beneficial ownership of companies and trusts from 2018, in a bid to increase transparency and reduce tax avoidance.
The European Parliament will have to approve the new rules before they can become law.
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
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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
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