More Trade News in Brief Week 6 (8 – 14 February 2016)

EU, Andorra Sign AEOI Agreement

The European Union (EU) and Andorra have signed a deal to automatically exchange tax information.

See more here.

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FTA Talks – China & GCC

FTA talks between China and the GCC – comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – originally began in 2004 but faltered in 2009. They resumed the talks this month and they are seeking to complete them by the end of 2016.

See more following the link.

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Canada, Taiwan Sign Double Tax Treaty

Canada and Taiwan have signed a double tax agreement (DTA) that will limit the withholding tax rates on income from dividends, interest, and royalties, and provide for the exchange of tax information.

Read more here.

 

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More Trade News in Brief Week 12 (16 – 22 March 2015)

* Switzerland, EU Ink New Savings Tax Pact

Switzerland and the European Union (EU) have initialled an agreement on the automatic exchange of tax information (AEOI). Account data will be collected from 2017, with the first exchange scheduled for 2018.

See more clicking here.

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* EU: Combatting Corporate Tax Avoidance

The European Commission presented a package of tax transparency measures as part of its ambitious agenda to tackle corporate tax avoidance and harmful tax competition in the EU. A key element of this Tax Transparency Package is a proposal to introduce the automatic exchange of information between Member States on their tax rulings

Read more here.

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* China and US Telecoms Giants Lead Global Patent Activity in 2014

According to the UN World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) annual review of international patent filings, a leading Chinese telecoms giant overtook a Japanese firm as the largest applicant last year, and China and the US together accounted for 87 per cent of the total growth in filings under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Under that system, some 215,000 applications were filed in 2014, a 4.5 per cent increase over the previous year, WIPO said in a news release.

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* WTO: Assistance in Food Safety, Animal and Plant Health

Five agencies and their partners operating a programme to help developing countries meet international standards on food safety and animal and plant health have approved plans for 2015–2019 designed to further strengthen safe trade.

The decision will allow the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF) to continue to provide assistance to developing countries,

The STDF was set up in 2004 by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO) and World Trade Organization (WTO), and is run by the five partners together with donor countries and representatives of developing countries.

Check here and here for more.

 

OECD Releases First BEPS Recommendations

 

The OECD released its first recommendations for a co-ordinated international approach to combat tax avoidance by multinational enterprises.

 

The recommendations, under the OECD/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting Project, are designed to create a single set of international tax rules to end the erosion of tax bases and the artificial shifting of profits to jurisdictions to avoid paying tax.

 

The first 7 elements of the Action Plan released today focus on helping countries to:

• ensure the coherence of corporate income taxation at the international level, through new model tax and treaty provisions to neutralise hybrid mismatch arrangements (Action 2);
• realign taxation and relevant substance to restore the intended benefits of international standards and to prevent the abuse of tax treaties (Action 6);
• assure that transfer pricing outcomes are in line with value creation, through actions to address transfer pricing issues in the key area of intangibles (Action 8);
• improve transparency for tax administrations and increase certainty and predictability for taxpayers through improved transfer pricing documentation and a template for country-by-country reporting (Action 13);
• address the challenges of the digital economy (Action 1);
• facilitate swift implementation of the BEPS actions through a report on the feasibility of developing a multilateral instrument to amend bilateral tax treaties (Action 15); and
• counter harmful tax practices (Action 5).

 Please find more here.

Corporate Income Tax Rates around the World

The key findings of the latest summary of worldwide corporate tax data published by The Tax Foundation are:

• The United States has the third highest general top marginal corporate income tax rate in the world at 39.1 percent, exceeded only by Chad and the United Arab Emirates.
• The worldwide average top corporate income tax rate is 22.6 percent (30.6 percent weighted by GDP).
• By region, Europe has the lowest average corporate tax rate at 18.6 percent (26.3 percent weighted by GDP); Africa has the highest average tax rate at 29.1 percent.
• Larger, more industrialized countries tend to have higher corporate income tax rates than developing countries.
• The worldwide (simple) average top corporate tax rate has declined over the past decade from 29.5 percent to 22.6 percent.
• Every region in the world has seen a decline in their average corporate tax rate in the past decade.

The Tax Foundation is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank founded in 1937 that collects data and publishes research studies on tax policies at the federal and state levels.

 

Read more about The Tax Foundation and Summary of Worldwide Corporate Tax Data 2014.

 

 

More Trade News in Brief Week 31 (28 July – 3 August 2014)

 

* OECD – Global Standard for Automatic Exchange of Information

 

The OECD released the full version of a new global standard for the exchange of information between jurisdictions.

 

Check the Standard for Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information in Tax Matters.

 

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* New WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement Facility

 

A new WTO initiative will help developing countries and least-developed countries reap the benefits of the WTO’s new Trade Facilitation Agreement.

 

Find more about here.

 

News from EU

 

 

* EU – Simpler and Fairer VAT System

 

The change in VAT rules will be applied from January 2015.

 

Check here from details.

 

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* EU – International Trade in Services

 

EU28 surplus up to €173 bn in 2013 and United States, Switzerland and China are the main partners.

 

Download the report here.

 

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* EU – Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)

 

The European Commission has today adopted two communications – an Action Plan to address infringements of intellectual property rights in the EU and a Strategy for the protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR) in third countries.

 

Read more about it here.