Voters in Switzerland on Sunday approved a shake-up of the corporate tax system, heading off what Swiss Minister of Finance Ueli Maurer had called an existential threat to the nation’s role as a business hub.
Provisional results with all votes counted showed that the measure passed in the binding referendum by a 66-34 percent margin.
The vote on tax reform and pension finance defuses a long-running row over favorable Swiss tax rates for multinational corporations.
Acceptance was vital to prevent the country being branded a low-tax pariah, Maurer has said.
Two years ago, under the Swiss system of direct democracy, voters rejected an attempt to overhaul the tax system, which critics say gives the country an unfair advantage in attracting global companies.
Under pressure from the EU and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the nation had promised to meet international standards and eliminate special low tax rates that benefit about 24,000 foreign companies based in Switzerland.
The Swiss government plans to scrap special tax status for these companies, which pay corporate rates in individual cantons as low as 7.8 percent to 12 percent, compared with 12 percent to 24 percent for “normal” Swiss companies.
Cantons in turn are to lower their tax rates for normal companies to deter them from leaving.
To cover the resulting revenue shortfall of about 2 billion Swiss francs (US$1.98 billion), the federal government is to increase the share of federal tax that cantons get.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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