Delivering his first Budget speech today, Arun Jaitley, India’s new finance minister, pledged to maintain a stable tax environment, but disappointed multinational taxpayers by not removing rules on retrospective tax. Indeed, while the majority of the finance minister’s proposals sound business-friendly enough, taxpayers would have liked more concrete detail.
A Swedish committee on corporate taxation has recommended changes to the rules governing interest deductibility. Hundreds of US businesses are not happy with the proposed reforms.
The popularity of corporate inversion transactions has grown considerably in the past few years, with notable examples including Medtronic-Covidien, Actavis-Warner Chilcott, Elan-Perrigo and Liberty Global-Virgin Media. Now shareholders in US companies are asking: “If our rivals are doing this, is it something we should be considering?”
The UK tourism industry received a boost this week as politicians came out in support of the Cut Tourism VAT campaign to reduce VAT on the sector. It has emerged that EU approval is not needed to go ahead with a cut, which could raise £4 billion and which would bring the UK’s rate on tourism more into line with the rest of Europe.
Repealing the carbon pricing mechanism was the first item on the Tony Abbott-led government’s agenda. Indeed, he may never have become prime minister if he had not promised to do so. Up to now he has failed in his attempts to repeal the tax, but that could all change next week.
