The British government is considering slapping a “supertax” on bankers’ bonuses amid fears of a lavish season for senior staff despite P>
Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling is mulling the levy on bankers handed bonuses above a certain level, and it could be included in his latest taxation and spending plans to be revealed tomorrow, the Financial Times said.
Staff at British banks as well as the British arms of overseas-based firms, such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank, could be hit with the new 12-month tax, the BBC said, citing unnamed Treasury officials.
APPEAL
The tax could appeal to voters in recession-hit Britain amid anger over huge bailouts to struggling banks following the global downturn, and a row over bonuses planned for staff at state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland.
Darling delivers his pre-budget report against the backdrop of national debt and a record recession ahead of a general election by the middle of next year that his ruling Labour Party is tipped to lose.
Darling is expected to focus tomorrow on fixing Britain’s public finances, which have buckled under the weight of the bailouts of the banks and a sharp economic downturn that has slashed taxation revenues.
Ahead of the report, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will set out plans for cutting public spending by £12 billion (US$19.68 billion) over four years, as he details the government’s plans to slash the massive budget deficit.
Brown was expected to outline the “efficiency savings” in a speech yesterday.
“The proposals we are setting out in this plan — which is just one element of our efforts to reduce the deficit — will go further than we have ever gone before in streamlining central government,” Brown was expected to say.
‘RANSOM’
Darling on Sunday told BBC TV that the government would not be “held to ransom” over bonuses but appeared to play down the prospect of new taxes on the financial sector.
“We are not going to be held to ransom by people who believe you can pay extraordinarily high bonuses without regard to what’s going on,” he said.
“With all matters of tax — whether it’s individuals, whether it’s companies — you’ve got to be fair, you’ve got to be reasonable,” he said.
“You’ve also got to have an eye on what the long-term result of all this might be,” he said.
The move comes as RBS, 70 percent state-owned, reportedly wants to pay £1.5 billion in bonuses to banking staff, and the board has threatened to quit if the government blocks the move.
Some observers blame the bonus culture of the world’s two pre-eminent financial sectors — the City of London and Wall Street — for encouraging excessive risk-taking, which helped to tip the global economy into chaos.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
RESILIENCE: Deepening bilateral cooperation would extend the peace sustained over the 45 years since the Taiwan Relations Act, Greene said Taiwan-US relations are built on deep economic ties and shared values, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said yesterday, adding that strengthening supply chain security in critical industries, enhancing societal resilience through cooperation and deepening partnerships are key to ensuring peace and stability for Taiwan in the years ahead. Greene made the remarks at the National Security Youth Forum, organized by National Taiwan University’s National Security and Strategy Studies Institution in Taipei. In his address in Mandarin Chinese, Greene said the Taiwan-US relationship is built on deep economic ties and shared interests, and grows stronger through the enduring friendship between
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
RSS