More Trade News in Brief – Week 23 (28 May – 3 June 2012)

* South Sudan Becomes 184th ILO Member State

 

25 May 2012, Geneva

 

The Republic of South Sudan accepts the obligations of the Constitution of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

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* Online Global Agro-ecological Zones Interactive Data Portal

 

25 May 2012, Rome

 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) developed an online data portal to help identifying areas for  increased global food production while maintaining natural resources base and facing the challenge of climate change.

 

The Global Agro-ecological Zones (GAEZ) Portal  seeks to enhance planners’ and decision makers’ capacity to estimate agricultural production potentials and variability under different environmental and management scenarios.

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* Swiss Votes Through Tax Deals

 

 31 May 2012

 

 The Swiss Council of States has agreed on the bilateral tax deals concluded with Germany, the UK and with Austria. The deals aimed at resolving the issue of undeclared and untaxed assets of foreign residents held in Swiss bank accounts.

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* NAFTA Industry Guide

 

Research and Markets has published the report “Apparel Retail – North America (NAFTA) Industry Guide”.

 

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* Revised Chinese VAT Pilot

 

The Beijing office of China’s State Administration of Taxation (SAT) announced to replace the existing business tax on the country’s service sector with value-added tax (VAT) from July 1^st.

 

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Austria and Luxembourg Block EU’s Plans on Savings Tax Agreements

17 May 2012

 

Austria and Luxembourg have rejected the European Commission’s plans to negotiate new and stronger savings tax agreements with Switzerland, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Andorra and San Marino.

 

The European Commission’s desire is to conclude a treaty and strengthen common instruments with third countries against tax evasion, to abolish banking secrecy and to ensure an automatic exchange of data with third states.